In my years as a film-viewer, which is the only kind of credential I really have to present, I have seen quite an assortment of unbelievably strange films, and other incredibly slow films. Being categorically slow or strange doesn't automatically turn a film from my good opinion, and sometimes it actually makes it better, or more interesting, or that it just suits the topic so well that there is no other way to present the idea. However strangeness or slowness is a kind of subtlety that requires great skill to handle correctly. Just like a film on any kind of controversial topic, there will certainly be an audience that will be uninterested, so it's best to cater to those who will accept the strangeness or slowness, and tell the story that needs to be told.
I'm not sure that Tokyo Sonata succeeds in this regard. It's both slow and strange, which, right now, to me, seems like a rare combination. I am also a fan of Japanese cinema, new and old, and I appreciate the fresh look at metropolitan culture through a different lens. This film is just odd. Something just doesn't work. Halfway through the film, I shot my filmgoing companion a quizzical look, and he confided, "I don't quite get the...thesis here." Whether or not this is the film that Kiyoshi Kurosawa had envisioned, it's misdirected and has too many disparate parts.
The Sasaki family, a fairly nuclear family living in Tokyo, falls prey to the laws of chaos theory once Ryuhei, the father, loses his job due to downsizing. Too ashamed and prideful to tell his family or to immediately take a new, lesser job, he goes around pretending to still be a high-ranking administrator, while taking advantage of the soup line and haunting the unemployment office. His dutiful wife, maybe bored, maybe disenchanted, sees him one day eating his free meal, and she suddenly understands everything. Ryuhei, meanwhile, tries to control the only thing left in his life, the activities of his children. He forbids his younger prodigious son from taking piano lessons, and his older son from joining the American army. We all know what happens, though, with this kind of desperation, and the appropriate rebellion ensues.
All of the events leading up to the Moment when the film comes together (you know there's going to be one) take about an hour and a half. It's slow, but the anticipation keeps you around, keeps you alert. (Except for one man in the audience who had only come, clearly, to kick off his shoes and snore his way through the second act.) All of a sudden, the film takes a drastic turn for the dramatic, but because it is so unexpected and unprecedented, it is difficult to look at the action with a serious eye. It all just seems so comical when the three main characters - mother, father and younger son - supposedly hit rock bottom with the kind of gasping, bumbling imperfection of a minor Shakespeare character. It reminded me a bit of The Host, which was decidedly a black comedy interspersed with dramatic and tragic moments. The emotional push-pull in that film was disconcerting, but it remained consistent throughout.
In case you already bought advanced, non-refundable tickets and you are cursing yourself for the lack of foresight, it isn't all bad. If I had seen the two parts separately, I'd have possibly enjoyed them for different reasons, and could say positive things about them as two different films. The characters of Ryuhei and his wife are a bit sad, but also familiar. The secretive husband and the quiet, sacrificing wife are common enough to engage an emotional response, though they don't entirely avoid being a cliche. There are some sweet and interesting scenes that are relevant to the film as a whole, and others that are maybe just vignettes to set the place and time. In the moment, there is enough to enjoy that I didn't feel uncomfortable or bored. Unfortunately, I never managed to shake the feeling that there was something slightly off.
The director, Kurosawa, perhaps intended for Tokyo Sonata to be a statement about the social pressures of Japanese society and the need for a patriarch to save face in front of his peers and family. I am not Japanese, nor have I visited the country, so I can't make any blanket statement about the importance of honor, but I know what I've heard from other sources. It is a popular theme in modern Japanese cinema, and I've seen it executed more successfully. Even with strangeness and slowness thrown in. Perhaps I'm incorrect in pinpointing that as the failure for this film, and after I finish this, I'll probably think of another slow, strange film that worked for me. (Yep. The Taste of Tea and Last Life in the Universe.) But I can say that the disconnect between the tone of the first three-quarters of the movie and the last quarter caused me, and at least one other person that I know of, to furrow our brows in confusion.
