Ass-Headed Bottom: I was obliged to acknowledge Akira Kurosawa's godlike directorial status about ten minutes into Tokyo Story, the only consequential Japanese film I have so far seen that is not by Kurosawa. I considered, first of all, that I'd seen Rashoman, Seven Samurai, Throne of Blood, Yojimbo, Sanjuro, Kagemusha, and Ran, and I'm pretty sure I've even watched one of Kurosawa's non-samurai movies (either Stray Dog or High and Low, but I was young and it was black and white). And I couldn't think of one thing in any of those movies--tangible or intangible--that I did not immediately and irrevocably want: the swords, the haircuts, the colors, the passion, the armor, the geishas, the retainers, the Shakespeare allusions, the flutes, the linear plots, the court jesters, the dreams, and of course the kimonos. So I marveled that, watching Tokyo Story, I envied not one thread, found not one shoe or face indefensibly exotic.
This film has nothing whatsoever to do with beauty and sublimity; nostalgia is as far from this experience as the atomic bomb is close (while watching it, there was no forgetting this month's terrible anniversary). Ozu's film refuses to celebrate a society that values hospitality beyond its utility, or that vilifies shame beyond its corresponding utility. The shots are spare indeed, but about halfway through the film the too-old couple is made to walk a rusting I-beam, which is also a balance-beam, which is also a coastline, and at that moment I realized I was watching a masterful cinematographer, in addition to a master story-teller. False emotion is over-expressed at the right times, and in the right places, but we feel only with one character, and only when she thinks no one else is watching. The movie is too long, but so, no doubt, was post-war life. With each smile, it struck me that the teeth were terribly in need of repair, and then that they were wartime teeth.
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