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‘Tokyo Sonata’: Music for the Eyes
By Jordan Ikeda
Rafu Staff Writer
Saturday, March 28, 2009
Director Kiyoshi Kurosawa steers clear of horror to create a poignant look at family.
Regent Releasing
A scene from “Tokyo Sonata” where Ryuhei (Kagawa) is reading his son’s (Koyanagi) army consent papers while his wife looks on.
Kiyoshi Kurosawa, best known for his contributions to J-horror cinema, delights with his newest movie, the winner of the Cannes Film Festival’s Un Certain Regard Jury Prize and a selection of the 2008 Toronto, New York and AFI Film Festivals, “Tokyo Sonata” which will have its U.S. debut Friday, March 27.
The film is a departure from Kirosawa’s other work, though, in spite of its seemingly mundane subject matter, through humor, tragedy and understanding, illumines the horror that can be found in everyday life.
“What I was interested in portraying,” Kurosawa told the Rafu Shimpo, “was the phenomenon of men keeping their unemployment a secret from their families. That strange psychology, I think is something that is distinctive about Japanese males today.”
Based on a story by Australian writer Max Mannix, “Tokyo Sonata” follows the progress of an ordinary family as it gradually comes undone.
Ryuhei (Teruyuki Kagawa) is just another fish in a sea of workers, a Tokyo husband and father of two who is unexpectedly laid off from his job. As a result, he becomes run aground, discovering and then joining a shoreline of unemployed men who conceal their shameful realities from their families and friends. Like fish without water, these men find themselves flopping around, slowly dying.
At home, Ryuhei takes out his frustration on his sons, forbidding his musically gifted youngest son, Kenji (Kai Inowaki) from taking piano lessons and alienating his eldest son, Takashi (Yu Koyanagi) to the point that he eventually enlists in the American army. Out of shame and pride, he also distances himself from his own wife, Megumi, (Kyoko Koizumi) who is trying to maintain her own sanity while striving to hold together a family that is unraveling.
The film moves slowly out of design. There aren’t buckets of blood being bandied about, nor freak monsters or dismembered limbs. Instead, the movie succeeds due to its attention to minute details.
A brief look exchanged between husband and wife, one that recognizes the lie, but respectfully concedes to reveal it. The humbling experience of cleaning a filth-ridden toilet seat after spending 30 years working in a suit in an office. A son’s rebuttal that because America defends Japan, joining the American army is a way to defend his home. A wife reaching out her arms and quietly asking someone to pull her up as her husband walks away.
While the movie builds to its crescendo, there are a few scenes that bump the viewer out of these finely captured nuances—getting hit by a car then walking away and a somewhat overly dramatic breakdown involving a thief who has lost a marble or two.
But oh what a crescendo.
In the film’s climactic scene, when Kenji sits down to play Clair de Lune from Debussy’s Suite Bergamasque, the sweet melodic piano slowly builds until it washes chills over everyone in attendance. After the final key is struck, instead of being showered with rousing applause, Kenji is instead greeted with a serene, introspective hush.
And this is where the movie brilliantly shines, in the juxtaposition of conventional thinking. Humor in being lost. Sadness in being found. Satisfaction in pretending. And hope in despair.
“That’s something I actually aim for,” said Kurosawa. “Even with some of the horror films I’ve made. But because of what you see in the horror films which is so gruesome and dreadful, most people weren’t able to see what I was trying to show in the end was some degree of hope.”
With “Tokyo Sonata,” Kurosawa delivers his message with undeniable silence.
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“Tokyo Sonata” will open March 27 at Laemmle’s Theatres: Sunset 5, 8000 Sunset Blvd. in West Hollywood; Playhouse 7, 673 East Colorado Blvd. in Pasadena; Monica 4-Plex, 1332 2nd St. in Santa Monica; and Town Center 5, 17200 Ventura Blvd. in Encino. For more info visit http://laemmle.com/viewmovie.php?mid=4664 |
