Tokyo Twilight (1957, Yasujirō Ozu) (Patreon)

55/100

SPOILERS ahoy. Really just the last sentence of the first paragraph. 

Has a reputation—not undeserved—as Ozu's bleakest film, but its quiet despair takes a form that just doesn't sit well with me, I'm finding. "The father and elder daughter try to meet the world with a gaze as steady as that of Ozu's static camera," Fred Camper writes, "ultimately resigning themselves to accepting tragedy, which is presented as inevitable in the flow of life." To which I can only respond: Whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa. Time out, Green Bay. Tell that fuckin' bullshit to the tourists. [Toby? Who the fuck is Toby?] "Like a Virgin"'s not about some sensitive girl who meets a nice fella. That's what "True Blue"'s about, granted, no argument about that. In fact, most if not all of the 14 other Ozu features I've seen to date could accurately be said to depict characters who come to terms with sadness and disappointment as unavoidable aspects of the human condition. Tokyo Twilight, by stark and to my mind dispiriting contrast, comes right out and identifies the root of everyone's unhappiness, which is that Mom selfishly pursued her own desires, ruining her children's lives in the process. All of the film's misfortune can be traced back to that violation, and while we can argue (and I may well soon be arguing in the comments with my conservative, sacrifice-favorin' friend Victor) about whether parents should endure a passionless or otherwise lousy marriage until the kids are grown, there's no doubt whatsoever of the moral framework being presented here. Ozu even makes a point of noting that Dad doted on Akiko, so that there's nobody else to blame...just in case the cruelly punitive scene of Mom looking out the train window for Takako, who pointedly stays away, had failed to bring that home. Kramer vs. Kramer's treatment of Joanna reflects a backlash against feminism—now imagine that she'd never tried to regain custody, and that Billy, as a teenager, became a petty thief and a drug addict and eventually wound up so lost that he threw himself in front of a train. 

As a child of divorce (albeit one raised by his mother and a loving stepfather, plus Dad was still very much around), maybe I'm taking the whole "Leave your husband, doom your children" thing a bit too personally. (It's Takako's decision to patch things up with her alcoholic spouse, lest her infant daughter go astray like Akiko, that really set my teeth on edge.) Even when I endeavor to look past any personal connection, though, such moralistic finger-pointing seems awfully reductive for Ozu. Which is a shame, because Akiko's ostensible downslide (which at one point sees her picked up by the police simply for being out alone late at night) provides Ozu with a rare opportunity to explore Tokyo's seedier side. I'd be willing to bet that Tokyo Twilight features fewer tatami shots (domestic interior, actor cross-legged on the mat, camera at eye level) than any other Ozu film I've yet seen; we spend an unprecedented amount of time in public locations (many with a disreputable air): a mahjong parlor, a pachinko parlor, a dock (yes, at twilight), and various bars and restaurants with foreign names like Etoile, every one of which seems to be playing jazzy lounge music. At times I felt as if I were watching a Seijun Suzuki film, though cueing up Detective Bureau 2-3: Go to Hell Bastards the following night made that seem retroactively laughable. Also a bit startling to see abortion dealt with so frankly, which no Hollywood film from this era would ever have dared/permitted. With a little more empathy for the mother (which would entail having Dad register any kind of emotion upon learning that she's returned to Tokyo and now has a third husband, not the dude she left him for—his apparent indifference is downright bizarre), Tokyo Twilight might have been the truly soul-rattling Ozu film that I've yet to find. Maybe the social conservatism is the ceiling?