Ozu's Tokyo Story, a masterpiece by any measure, is worth multiple viewings

It's pretty much impossible to over-praise Yasujiro Ozu's Tokyo Story (1953), from a screenplay by Ozu and Kogo Nodo, his collaborator on all of his major films, and with leading roles for several of the leading actors who appear in dozens of his film, most particularly Chishu Ryu as the father. This film, simple on the surface, is the story of an elderly couple living in a city a day's train ride away from Tokyo, go to the city to visit their children, in what perhaps will be their last such visit (and evidently their first in many years). We see right away on the arrival that the sudden appearance of these two quiet and submissive souls is seen by the children as nothing for a nuisance; in this culture, which traditionally had been built upon reverence for and deference to parents and the elderly, is shifting in postwar Japan to a get-ahead capitalism in which the elderly parents have no place. Everyone at first is painfully polite, but we can see that the children feel put out - even their children seem bratty and entitled, as the little boy whines about having to move his desk (we later see him working on an assignment for an English lesson - a glimpse at from where the postwar attitudes derive). Ultimately, rather than deal w/ the parents the children send them off to a so-called resort - they seem to delude themselves into thinking the parents would like that, when obviously the whole point of their visit is to spend time w/ family - and that's a further disaster. Rather than go through the whole plot, which includes some twists and surprises, it's important to note that Ozu's touch always allows for ambiguity and depth of characters; the father is no angel himself and no doubt was a difficult and distant father when the children were young. The conclusion, which brings many of these tensions to the fore, is stunning and heartbreaking - and all in the understate, almost ceremonial tone that characterizes most of Ozu's mature work - no hysterics or violence, in complete contrast to the more conventional Western family dramas. This film is worth multiple viewings, and it's worth watching frame by frame - it's impossible not to feel great empathy toward the lead characters, and in particular to one of the younger family members (played by Setsuko Hara, another Ozu regular), a figure who will remind viewers, I think, of Cordelia or the Book of Ruth.