Product: Tokyo Sonata (2008)
Rating: 5.0
Kurosawa's best film in years.
Tokyo Sonata (Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 2008)Kiyoshi Kurosawa branded himself one of the great new breed of Japanese filmmakers in the mid-nineties with Cure and Charisma, two of the best Japanese film of the last half of the last century. After spending some time directing horror films, which seems almost obligatory for Japanese directors these days (with a quick break in 2003 for the wonderful Bright Future), he has shown that he's still capable of directing some of modern Japan's best films with Tokyo Sonata.Ryuhei Sasaki (Hero's Teruyuki Kagawi), unsatisfied with the direction his company is taking, walks out on his position as the head of the administration department. While this is initially a liberating thing, he quickly runs into the big question: how's he going to tell his wife Megumi (Kyoko Koizumi, recently of Adrift in Tokyo)? This is not an uncommon question for salarymen who have quit, or lost, their jobs in Tokyo, it seems; the park where day laborers go to pick up work is chock full of guys in three-piece suits just like Sasaki. In fact, one day he meets an old school chum of his, Kurosu (The Great Yokai War's Kanji Tsuda, who also acts opposite Kagawi in the 20th Century Boys film series), in the food line. The two of them make a pact to help the other hide their unemployment from their families, but Sasaki quickly learns the truth of the matter--everyone knows Kurosu is unemployed except his wife. Sasaki fears the same may be true of his two sons, Takashi (Clearness' Yu Koyanagi) and Kenji (Inowaki Kai in his first screen appearance), but it seems his family is too busy falling apart to notice. Takashi is convinced his destiny lies with joining the American military, while Kenji is obsessed with the idea of learning to play the piano, a discipline his father strictly forbids (one of the film's few shortcomings is that the why of this is not clear; I inferred he thinks it's a girly thing to do, but I'm not entirely sure). With all the pieces in place, Kurosawa simply lets them fall where they may.The reasons I spent my time watching this thinking about Yasujiro Ozu's great Tokyo Story have more substance to them than the obvious title parallel, but I'm not sure how easy it's going to be to put them into words. It's not so much a style or a feel as it is an emotion; that same feeling of resolution in the face of existential despair, or even terror. There are other, more obvious parallels, such as the caliber of the actors (watch for Inowaki Kai, for if his performance here can be used as a benchmark, he's the next Tadanobu Asano) and Kurosawa's finely-detailed direction, but whereas Ozu was interested in telling a straightforward, simple story, Kurosawa can never resist taking things out to their logical, and often glorious, conclusion. If you've seen any of Kurosawa's movies, you'll know that things tend to go nuts about two-thirds of the way through the film. Tokyo Sonata is no exception to the rule, as everyone involved in this drama pretty much snaps (save Takashi, but that's another story). Everything blows up, and in another of those touches that make Kurosawa such an amazing director, the events at the end of the movie are in no way ambiguous; the ambiguity arises from the viewer trying to decide whether it's a happy ending or not. That's pretty amazing.Tokyo Sonata cements Kurosawa's place at the top of the heap, assuming such a thing was still necessary. Very few Japanese directors are capable of this level of work, especially on as consistent a basis as Kurosawa delivers. And trust me, you'll ever see anything that manages to be both this ludicrous and yet this noble at the same time. This is a movie that will stay with you a long, long time after you pop the DVD out--or, if you're lucky enough to manage it, after you leave the cinema. One of the first truly great movies of the new millennium. ****