$16 General Admission
$14 IFFBoston & Somerville members
With an introduction from local critic Jake Mulligan
SIGHT AND SOUND on TOKYO STORY:
The later films of Japanese master Yasujiro Ozu are marked by a striking uniformity of theme and form. These are stories of family life involving inevitable rupture, as things change, daughters marry, widowers grow old. Ozu films this bittersweet natural progression in his unmistakably controlled, minimal style, typified by head-on shots with the camera at the height of a seated observer. Tokyo Story is the best known (in the West) of this extraordinary cycle, a quietly tragic tale of an ageing couple coming to the painful realisation that their family no longer needs them.
Luminous Ozu regular Setsuko Hara plays daughter-in-law Noriko. Alhough not the same character as the Norikos she plays in LATE SPRING (1949) and EARLY SUMMER (1951), the films are considered a loose trilogy.
A brilliant film on generational change, a society in transition and what it means to feel you are no longer needed. Ozu is always the filmmaker to turn to if you want to see how to do more with less—the filmmaker of the quotidian, melding economy and intensity to extraordinary effect.
—Maria Delgado