Sonata de Tóquio

Salary man loses his job and in order to save face lives a lie to his family by continuing to set off to work as if all was normal. Meanwhile his wife detects the changes whilst his two son's grow further away from him.

The backdrop is the 2008 Japanese recession, and throughout we see suited figures walking ghostly across the screen, some looking for jobs, others like the lead character living their own lies. The movie doesn't pull any punches in it's damming portrayal of a modern Japan, throughout we see Tokyo portrayed as confined, gritty, cold and sterile. Gone are the neon and hyper kinetics of Shubuya or the affluent Ginza, what we have are job centre queues and homeless shelter camps.

What this movie also draws light on is a sense of masculinity in the modern age. We have the sins of the father resonating throughout this movie adding to a greater sense of tragedy.

Throughout Tokyo Sonata we feel as though the tragic nature of the storyline can only head in one direction, however whereas many tragedies shows art as destruction, here we have art as saviour.

A truly touching movie, the likes of which I haven't seen in a while. The movie doesn't wallow in it's own self pity, what is shows is that all our destined paths can only be walked by us alone, no matter what ties and bonds we have made along the way.

If every movie endeavoured to convey this stark yet simple message, then I'll be for that.

Tokyo Sonata resonates such simplicity in its telling that it's difficult to not like the movie. But in doing so, it also becomes victim of over-simplifying many of the issues its main characters face. The story is of a family of four: The husband has just been downsized, the wife is stuck in mundane mediocrity, the elder son doesn't have any sense of identity and the youngest is a rebel (he wants to play the Piano!). In an attempt to retain his honor and respect at home, the husband hides his jobless status from his family. He dresses up every morning for work, but instead spends the day in the queue for jobless for free food, or job placement. While the first act sets the characters and their dilemmas quite well, it's the second act where the movie really fails to connect. The younger son's fascination with his Piano Teacher and the elder's change-in-career weakens the story-telling before picking up again for a fascinating (and weird) third act, when the situations of the characters open up for all. Some bizarre turn-of-events brings the movie to a close that could be worthy of a rousing applause, but gets an awed gaze of amazement instead.

My Rating --> 3.5 of 5

For a foreigner like me, Japan is a mystery, both wonderful, weird and hard to understand, especially since most of my information about the country is anecdotal or (worse?) coming from mangas. I've met people having the greatest respect for Japanese customs and people who completely badmouth the country.

From this perspective, Tokyo Sonata is a bit of a gem, showing me how ordinary Japanese people live and think. There is the family, standard issue of father, mother and two children, and there are the roles: head of the family, respectful housewife, rebellious teenager and confused child. What do they do when the economic crisis and the traditional value system clash?

I thought the actors were good, the soundtrack as well (to be expected given the title), and the plot was slow but crisp. There must have been a lot of expectations on a guy directing movies when his last name is Kurosawa and not related to Akira, because the movie was overall an excellent film. However, given its two hour length and slow pace, I advice you look at it when in the mood for cinematography, not some easy entertainment. Also, it is a pretty sad drama in places, so be ready to empathize with some hard hit people.

At first I thought this film would be a depressing story to watch, but I was surprised that the film was actually very uplifting. Although it's a sad story overall, it has a very powerful message if you watch it to the end, a message that will encourage you to move on even when life gets to its darkest moment.

This story is about problems of people in Tokyo, all sorts of problems. The leader of the family lose their job and was afraid to tell his family, the elder son join American army and go to war, the younger son wants to learn the piano but the father forbids him, the wife is depressed of trying to hold the family together. The film is so delicate and beautiful. It captures the feeling of each character and the whole depressive atmosphere of Tokyo very well. The pace is slow but it's not boring because you can follow the story very easily and you can sympathize with each one of the characters. It doesn't even have any Hollywood boring formula of sentimental film. This is a real work of art.

I'm not gonna spoil this movie. I just want to tell you to go watch this film and watch it to the end although you feel that it's getting darker and darker. For me, this is not another good movie. This is a "great" movie because after I watch it, I feel that now I can go on with my life.

In Japan, the unemployment rate reached an historic high of 5.60 in July 2009. Today, over 30% of the work force is still compelled to take casual labor, with more than 5,000 casual workers living in internet cafés because they cannot pay their rent. Statistics, however, do not tell the human story of unemployment. Japanese director Kiyoshi Kurosawa, known for horror movies such as Cure and Pulse, has dramatized the social and psychological effects of Japan's economic woes in Tokyo Sonata, winner of the Un Certain Regard Jury Prize at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival. Shot in the outskirts of Tokyo and backed by the haunting score of Kazumasa Hashimoto, Tokyo Sonata is a brilliant and disturbing film that grips us through outstanding performances and an unsettling social message.

Tokyo Sonata follows Ryuhei Sasaki (Teruyuki Kagawa), a 46-year-old administrator in a Tokyo health care equipment company who loses his job after his department is outsourced to China. Like Vincent in Cantet's 2001 film Time Out, being suddenly without a job is damaging to Ryuhei's pride and he withholds the information from his wife Megumi (Kyoko Koizumi) and their two boys, Takashi (Yu Koyanagi) and 12-year-old Kenji (Kai Inowaki). Struggling to save face and maintain his moral authority, Ryuhei leaves home each morning dressed in a business suit and tie, spending his day standing in long lines looking for work and joining homeless men and other unemployed seeking food at a soup kitchen.

Ryuhei's wife Megumi goes about her routine household chores without complaining and never questions her husband, even when he comes home each night looking increasingly despondent. It is obvious that the layoff has simply crystallized the underlying discontent in the Sasaki family and Kurosawa shows the family eating dinner together in a sterile environment with little or no communication. In an incident at school in Kenji's sixth grade class, Kurosawa also shows how the loss of moral authority can lead to sudden disintegration. After Kenji is admonished by the teacher for passing on another student's manga, the boy insensitively tells the entire class that he witnessed his teacher on the train reading porn, causing chaos in the classroom.

Ryuhei soon discovers that he is not alone. While eating in the park, he meets an old school friend, Kurosu (Kanji Tsuda), who is also unemployed and also has not told his wife. "The lifeboats are gone", he tells Ryuhei, "The water's up to our mouths." Kurosu is engaged in even a bigger deception, programming his cell phone to ring every five minutes to give the impression that he is receiving work-related calls. He later invites Ryuhei to his house for dinner so that he can introduce him to his wife as a co-worker. Ryuhei is interviewed for jobs but none of them are the type of work he is looking for. One prospective employer asks him what he can do and he impulsively answers that he can sing karaoke.

As the charade of pretending to go to work continues, Ryuhei takes his anger and frustration out on Kenji who has become fixated on taking piano lessons. When he learns that the boy has been spending his lunch money on piano lessons, Kenji is beaten and thrown down the stairs, requiring a trip to the hospital. The older son, Takashi, is also severely chastised and asked to leave the house when he tells his parents that he intends to join the U.S. military to fight in the Middle East. From this point, events seem to spiral out of control and, in a jarring twist that takes the film in a different direction, Megumi is held hostage by Dorobo, a home-invading robber (Koji Yakusho).

The burglar is almost a comic character who, while being driven around town by Megumi with a knife thrust in her face, admits that he's been a failure at everything he has done, even robbery. The frightening drive ends in a shack by the pitch-black sea where a suddenly contrite Dorobo asks Megumi if she is a goddess. It is here that she discovers what is available to her in life if she is freed from illusions and wonders aloud how she can start over. "Wouldn't it be wonderful", she asks, "if my whole life was a dream so far and suddenly I awaken?" When more disturbing things happen to the family, things seem as if they could not possibly get any worse. Yet in a coda of renewal, the calming music of Debussy tells us that if we open our heart to its enchanting melody, we can awaken to the serenity of knowing who we really are.