Tokyo Story (1953)

The great Yasujiro Ozu’s career is marked with masterpieces but in my opinion, Tokyo Story is its crowning point, his greatest work. Its story is littered with simplicity, the finest element of the master of time: an elderly couple journey from their village to the wonderful Tokyo, to visit their children who live and work in the metropolis. Once upon arrival, it becomes somewhat apparent that their oldest son and daughter both do not have the time for them as they are too unavailable working respectively on their jobs and the elderly couple soon become aware that they feel as if kept out of the family and begin to feel disappointed, deciding to return to their village, where it occurs that, during the journey, the elderly mother becomes hugely ill, perhaps too late for their children to make amends. Tokyo Story is the finest of the director. It is a beautiful film, in which with his trademark style, Ozu captures great focus on small details, creates a beautiful, meditative effect by a generally slow approach of pace and focuses on depicting themes of troubles in community, all with exquisite simplicity, this time being the modern urbanization of Japan. A beautiful piece of cinema, this is truly of one of the greatest films of all time.