A documentary this helps us understand the work of Wim Wenders

 Wim Wenders's documentary Tokyo-ga (1985, within a year of the completion of Paris, Texas) is a curiosity. Wenders explains in his voiceover narration that he undertook this project - a filmed record of his visit to Japan - as a tribute to one of his favorite filmmakers, Ozu; that in itself was to me a surprise. Not that Ozu wouldn't be on anyone's list of the greatest filmmakers of the century, but it's hard to see any direct connection between the work of these 2 directors. In fact, Ozu seems in most ways the antithesis to Wenders: his films are strongly driven by character and plot; though visually interesting, they are only rarely visually arresting; in methodology, Ozu is known for his complete control of the shoot, built upon extraordinary elaborate planning ahead of time, allowing little leeway for the DP, lots of stills and long shots, almost no tracking ever. As to Wenders - think the exact opposite of everything I just said about Ozu. That said, however, WW's film is a quirky and odd look at Japan as he searches for images and oddities, so we get extensive looks at pachinko, arcade games, a workshop where they manufacture waxed-images of food for display us in restaurants, a lot of time w/ a group of young Japanese who gather in a park to listen and dance to American early R&B, and some long takes of the elaborate patterns of Japanese railroad tracks (here is something that WW does share w/ Ozu). All these make the film worth watching and help us understand WW's narrative films, even though I think this travelog/documentary  won't shed much light on Ozu (other than an long interview w/ his long-time cameraman, who bursts into tears at the end of the take and asks to be left alone). At the outset, WW shows some clips of Ozu's greatest work, Tokyo Story (in particular some views of the home town of the father several hours from Tokyo), and I'm surprised WW didn't counter these w/ shots of the same locales in 1985; you can look online and see how these scenes have changed over time - when I first did so, I gasped.