In a dramatic atmosphere, this movie, follows an aging couple, who make a long journey to Tokyo to visit their children, but upon their arrival, they are shocked by receiving little attention from their children.
In this exquisite merging of specific and universal, infinite and infinitesimal, Tokyo Story perhaps most clearly illuminates that Ozu is not the most Japanese of filmmakers, but the most human.
With its debt to Leo McCarey's 'Make Way for Tomorrow,' Yasujiro Ozu's 'Tokyo Story' is no less true, shattering, and not for viewers fretting about unsympathetic grown-up children.
[VIDEO ESSAY] Yasujirô Ozu's beloved masterpiece of postwar Japanese cinema speaks to audiences from all backgrounds because of the cross-generational familial truths that the prolific director/co-writer lovingly metes out.
Ozu's long shots, knee-high camera placement, and collapsed perspective -- as gorgeous and unsettling as a Cézanne -- gather power over the duration, but time itself is the master's most potent weapon.
