Tokyo Story

There is no anniversary to force onto 13 November, but deep into early winter the days are short and the nights long, which suits the slow, unhurried cinema of Ozu. Tokyo Story fills a conspicuous hole in the archive: we already have Ozu's Late Spring, but not his most widely acknowledged masterpiece. It keeps today's pick in 1950s Japan, and holds up a mirror — unhurried yet very clear — to every adult child who lives far from their parents and sees them too rarely.

周吉和老伴 Tomi 住在濑户内海的尾道，儿女都在东京成家立业。老两口难得出门，决定去东京探望孩子。到了才发现，长子是忙碌的诊所医生，长女在美发店帮工，孙辈只惦记着电视。孩子们不是不孝，只是被自己的生活塞满，分给父母的只有勉强腾出的半天。老两口被客气地「安排」去温泉转一圈，反倒更像多余的人。而真正还把他们当亲人对待的，是早已守寡的二儿媳 Noriko——她本没有义务，却比亲生儿女更温柔。

Tokyo Story has long stood near the top of every greatest-films-ever-made list. In the 2012 BFI Sight & Sound critics' poll it ranked first, and in the 2022 edition it still held third. Ozu sets the camera very low — close to eye level on a tatami mat — almost never moves it, and uses near-symmetrical static frames and well-timed empty shots (a morning lane, a passing train) to carry feeling. Without dramatic conflict of the usual kind, it renders the loosening of the postwar Japanese family and the silent gap between parents and grown children more lastingly than any sentimentality could. Its grammar later shaped a whole generation of directors, from Hirokazu Kore-eda to Hou Hsiao-hsien.