Tokyo Sonata

Kiyoshi Kurosawa's latest film speaks directly to contemporary issues, that are relevant both in Japan and around the world: the economic crisis and corporate downsizing, a growing identity crisis within the so-called "nuclear family," increasing uncertainty regarding gender roles, and political uncertainties in the wake of terrorist scares and the wars in the Middle East. When a large corporation decides to ship most of its jobs oversees to China with its less expensive labor force, a middle manager is left without a job and without a clue how he can break it to his wife without losing face. So he decides not to tell her. It turns out he's not alone. As he discovers, there are hordes of out-of-work businessmen who also couldn't break it to their wives and pretend to go to work but wind up wandering parks and loitering daily in lounges, until they can safely return home without arousing suspicion. This is an alternately heartbreaking, horrific and funny film about the slow unravelling of a family, that remains together only to maintain appearances, and raises the question whether there is any possibility of starting over, of becoming a new person, of choosing for oneself rather than living by habit and to keep up appearances, and especially if such a thing is possible in an increasingly uncertain political and economic climate.K. Kurosawa (no relation to Akira) is best known for his horror-themed films, and is responsible for some of the very best of the so-called "J-horror" films (Cure, Pulse, Retribution). His real interest, even in those films, seems to be more with what we think of as ordinary life, the unsettling feeling that arises when the ordinary breaks down due to social and personal changes, when the everyday no longer makes sense. Even in his horror films the most unsettling moments tend not to be those when the supernatural monster (ghost, apparition, serial killer) appears, but when a protagonist begins to suspect his own guilt or complicity with the horror, and after that the ordinary routines are no longer a refuge or comfort. Home becomes unwelcoming and uncanny. Friends and loved ones become strangers. Another thing about Kurosawa is that while he is able to create real and palpable dread, and genuine fear, he is also a master of creating the uncomfortable laugh that arises when something utterly unexpected occurs. As scary as some of his horror films are, they are also often very funny, but it is the humor of the absurd and the subtle surreal, akin to the humor in works by Bunuel but not quite so blunt, rather than the humor of the silly. He also seems to delight in the "red herring" -- elements that seem to mark a turning point but end up amounting to nothing -- as here when Ryuhei (the father) finds a large packet of money that might turn his life around but then spends the night in a roadside ditch.What Kurosawa does with horror (and other related genre) films is to deliver what is expected from the genre (scares, thrills, etc.) but in unexpected ways. He takes the cliches (as in Pulse when the heroines find themselves compelled against all reason to go into the house where the horror resides) and turns them on their heads, showing that they are absurd and not at all inevitble but finding some way to make them fit. Here he takes the "family crisis drama" and delivers the goods, exactly the kinds of life's lessons and reconciliations you'd expect, but by a route that no one could predict and in part this is because he channels the emotional elements of that drama in ways that draw upon his mastery of the unsettling and absurd. This film, in which there are no explicitly supernatural or horrific elements (unless you count the downsized middle managers who wander the back allies and parks of Tokyo like zombies in suits, in their efforts to keep up appearances), is as laugh-out-loud funny and at times as creepy as any of his other films, but there is a greater warmth here, a depth of humanism and sympathy for the lost individuals at the heart of the story that I haven't felt as strongly in his other works. It is, probably, his most touching film, and possibly the most technically brilliant. Stylistically at moments and thematically throughout, the film bears comparison to Ozu and especially to his own Tokyo Story that also explored generational gaps and the effects of economic change on the structure of the family. Much of the film, especially the parts takes place in the Sasaki home, is shot in a series of simple compositions, capturing household rituals through windows and door frames. These mostly static shots are complemented by much more rough, handheld point of view shots that hesitate and stumble uncertaintly, as if their bearers did not know where to look and no longer recognize what they are looking at.