Tokyo Sonata

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

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.

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.

After Kiyoshi Kurosawa's film Sakebi (2006), a horror one, comes out his last film Tokyo Sonata in which funny, dramatic, passionate and frustrated attitudes seem to be each one of the characters of the four personages in this film (the husband, the mother, the youngest son and the oldest son respectively) which catches spectator interest through the life of this Japanese middle-class traditional family. With a simply story depicted in Tokyo city and structured with events which show social-economic issues of ordinary people who try to manage without the century present problems, there is no lost for watching Tokyo Sonata. Also, enjoyable the breath of Japanese culture representation.

Ryūhei a salary man loses his job, and is soon on the scrap heap of the unemployed, a very common and relevant case for so many in these times.

In this case the film documents what it means to be a working man or woman, a case of how a job can define a person. In the case of Ryūhei it's the struggle to maintain that sense of honour and pride that is so ingrained in Japanese culture, that when he is finally let go, he simply packs his belongings from work and walks out-not a word to his colleagues, and not a word to his family.

The next morning he leaves for 'work' donned in the usual work attire spending the day on the fringes of regular life-lining up for free food, sitting in public libraries, roaming the various employment offices for vacancies, then coming home earlier then usual to face the doom of subsequent family expenses (the son wants to take piano lessons, the wife wants a new car, the heater needs to be replaced).

Despite the downward spiral into despair for which this film descends into,there is a feeling of a more hopeful future.