{★★★★}
I have been admiring the name "Tokyo Story" for a long time, and I didn't watch the movie in its entirety until yesterday. From the perspective of film history, the greatness of "Tokyo Story" needs no further words. Its transcendent temperament, as well as its extremely delicate life description, are unprecedentedly self-contained. In a large number of classic movies struggling to pursue drama, The existence of "Tokyo Story" is unusual and simple. I keep asking myself a question like this. I must have tens of thousands of fans who have asked the same question: Why has no one photographed a simple subject like this before? The ultimate?
But from the perspective of the movie, "Tokyo Story" is difficult to be easily enshrined in the altar. In other words, it is by no means an instant classic. Its detachment and line drawing are almost integrated into life, a medium that cannot be touched by the senses. When we watch movies, we want to get stimuli. In addition to the sensual and crude stimuli, there are also high-end, intelligent animal stimuli. The excitement that "Tokyo Story" gives the audience is the same as that of life, which resists the touch of the senses. It's just that life will hurt you, and movies sometimes.
Although two paragraphs have been exhausted, all the rhetoric about this movie is in vain before the subject of Ozu Yasujiro is really talked about. What is the theme of Ozu's ultimate practice? Even if you have only heard of Ozu, you should know that he has only one proposition that he loves: family. But in my opinion, this is an excessive simplification. Richard Linklater’s filming of Boyhood has attracted many film critics, but I still don’t believe that it was my teenage years, or even the people around me. Coincidentally, Ozu’s family is not a family under one roof-but is bound by etiquette and tradition. , A family that regards subtlety as a virtue. It is this kind of family that makes the story of "Tokyo Story" established. I have no intention of vetoing its universality, but human empathy is enough to cross cultural barriers. This does not mean that the barriers themselves do not exist. As a member of an Eastern family, I really know the world in which "Tokyo Monogatari" is in. What is missing in the eyes of Westerners is actually a building block for me. In the face of Ozu's movies, I discarded even the redundant and incomprehensible, and just threw myself into it sometimes deep and sometimes boring.
There is a scene in the movie. Soon after the beginning, the eldest son Koichi sat with his parents to chat, and the daughter and daughter-in-law went back home because it was getting late. Fortunately, after a while, he turned to ask his father if he was tired. The father said it was okay. Fortunately, he then asked his mother the same question. The mother said that he was a little sleepy. The father said at this time, let’s go to sleep. Fortunately, he took the message to his parents. Good night. Is the mother really tired, or does Koichi really want his parents to rest earlier? If you learn about Koichi's personality from the second half of the movie, you will find that it is neither. Most of it was fortunate to sit impatiently early in the morning and wanted to urge the parents to go back to sleep. The father didn't hear the overtones of the son at first, but the mother understood. As soon as the mother understood, the father understood, and as soon as the father agreed, the son simply ended the conversation. Ozu’s characters are like most ordinary people in our lives who hide happiness, anger, sorrow, and joy in polite conversations. Etiquette restricts their behavior and often puts them in an embarrassing dilemma. The couple laughed at each other and told each other that they were satisfied, and neither wanted to trouble and had to make fun of living on the street.
Because I am so familiar with these clumsy bad habits, I can read endless sadness from them. The clown’s smiling face is actually crying, and the parents who love face and seek contentment are actually bleeding in their hearts. Ozu's image style, in my opinion, the most profound thing is not the low lens level with the line of sight, or the pillow shots that separate the main plot shots, but the human scene that he wants to talk but stops. Here, the backs of parents rickety appear repeatedly, on the grass, on the banks of the river, and by the park. They are like wandering in the huge Tokyo, what has changed is the scenery, what has not changed is their loneliness. You know what Ozu wants to confess, but he just kept silent.
This old couple is sad, but their sadness is not written on the front or back of the film. Their sadness resists the touch of the senses. But the parent-child relationship-the topic Ozu really wants to talk about-is inseparable from this tradition. The story told in "Tokyo Story" is the helplessness of the world, and the compromise made by traditional morality in interpersonal mobility. The parent-child bond is the strongest in childhood, but when children work, get married, and leave their parents, the so-called bond that blood is thicker than water weakens day by day. When it comes to the children in "Tokyo Monogatari," it has been divided into two worlds. . Will these two worlds no longer intersect? How can it be. They will continue to intersect until the end of one's life. In addition to "filial piety", "Tokyo Monogatari" predicted the disintegration of Eastern-style families, and predicted the end of a parent-child where filial piety is regarded as the purpose but emotional isolation is inevitable. But if this movie is just to ring the death knell for countless families, or to describe the scene of children scrambling for relics after the funeral (sounds like a song by Pistol Annies) in a bitter tone, then it can’t walk in. In anyone's heart. It was Kiko who infused the whole movie with life.
What a perfect woman, I was so amazed in my heart when I watched it. She is gentle, virtuous, filial, hardworking, humble and sincere, and her smile can melt the glacier of all hearts. A closed and hopeless movie needs an outlet more than any other movie, a kind incarnation that saves all the characters and the audience. Kiko is such a person. According to today's standards, Kiko's obedience and flawlessness may be the product of the patriarchal society, but in the movie, she is not perfect. She found that she had gradually forgotten her dead husband and gradually moved away from her former family members, but she struggled with her selfishness, even if her selfishness had always been another kind of selflessness.
I think of the last Ozu movie I saw, "The Only Son". "The Only Son" touched me far less than "Tokyo Monogatari", to a certain extent because Ozu's first audio film explained the characters' psychology too transparently, so I think there will be less aftertaste. At the end of "Tokyo Story", Kiko and his father gave up a few polite sentences. The father took his mother's watch and gave it to Kiko. Kiko suddenly hid his face and wept without saying a word. There is no better way to close the curtain on such a plain and lonely story.
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