Tokyo Story DVD+Blu-ray

Every ten years, Sight and Sound magazine polls critics around the world to find out their ten best films of all time. In the last such poll in 2002, Tokyo Story came fifth. It was underrated – it should have come second, after the director's own Late Spring.

Ozu is commonly described as the most 'Japanese' of directors. Absolute nonsense, of course - he's the most universal. For what is Tokyo Story but an echo chamber of everyone's thoughts on family, of every parent's concern for their child's future, of every child's need to break away and the mixture of guilt and relief that follows?

Ozu represents these themes through the simplest narrative possible: an elderly couple visiting their grown-up offspring. But each child has become a care-worn adult – a busy neighbourhood doctor or penny-pinching beautician – that finds their doddering relatives an unwelcome intrusion. So they are moved on, Lear-like, until they end up in the tatty tenement flat owned by their daughter-in-law, Noriko, who lost her husband, their second son, in the war. Ironically, she is the only one who shows them any compassion. (There are so many similarities to the protagonists of Early Summer (also released this month), even down to the names, that this could be considered the same family moved on two years, or High Summer, if you like.)

It's a slight tale, but it's sustained by a remarkable complexity of characterisation and a sure eye for the telling detail – the way the eldest son playfully calls to his pet after hearing of his mother's illness, a hairstyle suggested by the beautician as “stylish” later worn by the hostess of a backstreet bar. There are allusions to characters' pasts – the father's alcoholism, the waspish eldest daughter's childhood innocence – that colour what could have been sentimental archetypes. In all, there is a powerful sense of life lived, stretching out beyond the screen.

This must have been a very personal project for Ozu, who never married and lived his whole life with his mother. But its beauty and clear-eyed understanding make it accessible to all. An essential purchase, especially as the set includes Ozu’s 1941 film, Brothers and Sisters of the Toda Family, whose themes complement Tokyo Story beautifully. It's also about the death of a parent, this time the patriarch, and the coldness of his children towards their widowed mother and younger sister. The film is notable for its class consciousness and for the fact that it was one of only two that Ozu completed in wartime. It's unrestored and the soundtrack is hissy, but it's great to have this neglected gem finally available.

Michael Bartlett on 23rd March 2010
Author of 26 reviews