Tokyo Sonata Tagged Articles at Cinematical

When the average American film fan thinks of Japanese movies, they'll probably picture one of three things: either a samurai or a gangster -- Toshiro Mifune and his sword, or Takeshi Kitano and his gun -- or a stringy-haired ghost girl. Die-hard fans will know that Yasujiro Ozu, Nagisa Oshima and Mikio Naruse also made contemporary dramas about modern-day citizens, often trying to figure out their lives in the post-WWII turmoil. But those dramas were hindered by the times, or by the censors; the characters were polite and functional and hid their own true emotions in an attempt to do what they were supposed to be doing. But there's something in the air over in Japan right now; they're making melodramas, big, roiling, red-blooded ones filled with anguish and torment and heartbreak.

Earlier this year, Kiyoshi Kurosawa -- who is thus far best known for his truly terrifying films like Cure (1997) and Pulse (2001) -- came out with Tokyo Sonata, a devastating (but defiantly odd) look at a crumbling family. The father loses his job, the eldest son contemplates joining the U.S. military and the youngest son sneaks off for secret piano lessons, while the mother finds herself kidnapped by a charismatic burglar. Kurosawa somehow ties together these plot threads with a few scenes at the family home, in which little of the stuff that we can see happening actually gets discussed. It's a brilliant portrait of disconnect and lack of communication.

As last year, I want to use this space to highlight some terrific films that came down the pike in the first six months of the year -- and merrily continued down the pike without anyone giving much of a damn. This happens to a host of deserving movies every year; given how much of a miracle it is when an indie actually takes off, there's no avoiding it. But these seven are eminently worth your time; at the very least, I promise they're interesting. Give them a shot.

1. Two Lovers (James Gray) -- Actually my favorite film of the year, this melancholy character study is carried out with such painstaking attention to detail that it becomes akin to one of Henry Selick's stop-motion miracles -- watching it inspires a sort of awe. This is James Gray's follow-up to We Own the Night, and Gray has announced himself as one of our most important newcomers, a master at creating living, breathing, populated, real universes for his characters to inhabit. [Now on DVD.]

2. Julia (Erick Zonca) - This movie barely saw theaters at all -- I saw it in a one-week run courtesy of our local Film Society -- but it might have been a decent investment for an actual distributor. Though it has someone profoundly unpleasant at its center -- the perpetually drunk and nasty title character, played by the incredible Tilda Swinton -- it eventually turns into a remarkably tense little thriller, complete with a classic kidnapping scenario and a chance for the rotten protagonist's redemption. [On DVD August 18th.]

Sergey Dvortsevoy's Tulpan won the Un Certain Regard category at the Cannes Film Festival tonight, with Tokyo Sonata taking the Jury Prize. Well, darn ... it figures that one of the few films we didn't manage to catch at the fest ended up winning the category.

The film is a Kahzakstanian tale of a young man who must marry before he can become a shepherd, but the only prospect he has is Tulpan, the daughter of another shepherding family, who doesn't like him because his ears are too big.

While he's perhaps best known for directing the original Pulse, Kiyoshi Kurosawa's new film, Tokyo Sonata, is an unexpected pleasure -- not only because it's a departure from the J-horror films that made his name, but because it's also a startlingly rich, funny and strong drama, without a hint of the supernatural or unearthly. That's not to say it's not exciting, or scary or startling, but rather to say that it concerns itself with normal, average (which is hardly normal, and rarely average) life as its main concern. Ryhuei (Teruyuki Kagawa) is a chief administrator in a medical-supplies company ... or, rather, he was; he's been downsized, his position outsourced. He can't bring himself to tell his wife, Megumi (Kyoko Koizumi), and has even less an idea of what he'd say to his sons Takashi (Yu Koyangi) and Kenji (Kai Inowaki), so for a while he dresses for work, leaves in the morning and goes to the park. Or looks for new work that simply isn't there.

At heart, Tokyo Sonata is about the difficulty of necessary conversations, and the necessity of difficult conversations. Ryhuei isn't the only person not talking about what's really going on; Megumi's deeply unhappy in her life, for reasons she can't even explain to herself; Takashi is thinking about embarking on a bold, if ill-advised, adventure; Kenji wants to study the piano, and does so in secret after his father's dismissal of the idea. Watching some films, you think that the plot's complications and character's stresses could be cleared up in one simple conversation ... and watching other, better films, you think that the plot's complications and character's stresses could be cleared up in one simple conversation and think of all the times that's been the case in your own life and how you may have failed to do so at the time, too.