Tokyo Twilight

One of the reasons Yasujiro Ozu is deemed such an esteemed director is his universal take on things. His films were considered “too Japanese” for western audiences when they were first made, it wasn’t till after his death in the nineteen seventies, that American audiences saw his work for the first time. It didn’t matter that his characters were Japanese, they dealt with everyday issues that were important to us, and he remains important because we constantly familiarize ourselves with his world.

One such film of Ozu’s that works with me on this level is “Tokyo Twilight”; though it isn’t one of his best known films or most revered, when I first saw it, I was struck by how much the characters and the situations seemed so familiar to me.

The story concerns a constant thread in Ozu’s films: The disillusionment of the family. When the film opens, it appears that this particular family is already disillusioned, it deals with a patriarch (Chisu Ryu), with two grown up daughters Takako (Setsuko Hara) and Akiko (Ineko Arima). We learn that the girls’ mother had abandoned the family earlier and left with a man who worked for the father, causing him to raise his daughters alone. The story much involves these girls as grown women and their parallel struggles to find happiness; Takako, the oldest has left her abusive husband and has taken her child to live with her father. Akiko has found herself with an unwanted pregnancy, and is trying to track down the father who has been avoiding her. One day while Akiko is trying to track down her boyfriend, she meets a woman who she thinks may be her mother; we learn that it is indeed their mother who has married another man after the one she ran off with had died. She is now an old repentant woman looking for forgiveness, and trying to be a part of their lives.

“Tokyo Twilight” has the elements of an American melodrama, but in the hands of Ozu it remains a subtle sublime work, I was actually shocked to learn that the film was criticized for being too melodramatic, looking at it I can’t imagine why. With this film, Ozu is trying to examine what happens when children are raised without a full family, it’s not what happens to them that I find interesting, it’s the growing resentment of the children, and the bitterness they feel towards their mother. Takako is unable or unwilling to forgive her in the end of the film, which culminates in one of Ozu’s most saddest moments as the mother is waiting at a train station for a daughter who will never come.

Akiko’s circumstances are even more tragic, she is the youngest, and she has taken up with the wrong crowd. She feels unloved by her father who scolds her, but he simply doesn’t know how to communicate with her. Akiko never grew up with a mother figure, and while we see a little bit of maternal instinct in her relationship with her sister, that part of her is never filled. Akiko even questions her own motherhood capabilities when she must decide whether or not to have an abortion.

“Tokyo Twilight” is perhaps Ozu’s darkest film, which doesn’t seem to have a silver lining, however we are left with an image of the father, that leaves it somewhat hopeful, yet Ozu seems to be working on a different level than what he is used to. The world depicted in “Tokyo Twilight” is bleak, usually his films deal with a fully functional family, where the tragedy comes when one of them either goes off to get married or dies, in this film, he’s dealing with a family that struggles to find its footing, it was broken before the movie even started. Ozu is showing us the aftermath of a family that isn’t full, each character is alienated and can’t communicate with the other the way they want.

Like I mentioned before this film speaks to me on a personal level, I feel I’ve seen these scenes played out in real life even though I can’t say for certain, I can believe a family like this exists, and perhaps is even more common than the ones in Ozu’s other more familiar films. Broken families are always a heartache, and Ozu is relentless in showing their bitterness, sadness, and isolation in this film. It isn’t a pretty picture, but because Ozu has such a light humanist touch, he’s able to make it beautiful. I think it has something to do with the fact that he truly loved his characters; we understand what everyone is going through, there isn’t anyone who doesn’t get our empathy.

Ozu was a man who understood human behaviour perhaps better than any other director, and he understood the tragedy in everyday lives, he never had to overdramatize it, he didn’t need to, his films dealt with universal stories of family, love, loss, and loneliness, I don’t thing anyone understood these themes better than Ozu.