Tokyo Story

The Big Soccer Movie Draft that i referred to in this posting. earlier this month has had me rewatching a lot of movies. Yes, I am a dork. But, every once in a while a film may take a second viewing years down the line for me to realize its greatness or lack their of. For instance Easy Rider did not hold up when I viewed it a few years after my initial viewing. However, The Passion of Joan of Ar seemed much better than I remembered it when I watched it the second time, a few years removed. I mean, those eyes, look at the passion!! This past weekend I rewatched Tokyo Story for the first time since college, I loved it much more now. In fact, I went into a small temper tantrum when it was picked before me in Round Six. Damn.

The story is simple enough. A older couple goes to visit their grown up children in Tokyo. The children are too busy with their own lives and wind up trying to offload their parents onto one another. After the children pool their money to send the parents to a resort type spa the parents decide its time to go home. The mother falls ill, and now the children need to deal with that reality. All of this happens over the course of nearly 3 hours. To me, the film didn't seem that long ay all. It definately is a film that would be considered slow moving by todays standards (it was made in 1953).

One reviewer said of the film, "It's like people watching through the eyes of God."
The pace of the film, the way the actors interact with eachother, the dialogue, it definately suits what the reviewer said. To someone who has moved away from home, my parents still live in South Jersey, the overiding story and themes definately resonated with me. Perhaps, when I watched it in college those themes didn't seem so real. Or maybe it's after losing two granparents in the past 12 months that made me more open to the film. I'm still bitter that I missed out on picking this in the movie draft, it certainly would have been a gentler pick than Kubrick's Paths of Glory. So it goes.