Tokyo Sonata (2008)

Directed by: Kiyoshi Kurosawa | 119 minutes | drama | Actors: Teruyuki Kagawa, Kyôko Koizumi, Yû Koyanagi, Inowaki Kai, Haruka Igawa, Kanji Tsuda, Kurosu Kazuya Kojima, Kôji Yakusho, Jason Gray

Superficially, ‘Tokyo Sonata’ seems at first to be a fairly straightforward story about a man who loses his job and does not dare to tell his family. Such situations have been filmed more often, but this scenario adds a new dimension. This time, director Kurosawa has not made a horror film, but has focused more on the arthouse film enthusiast. ‘Tokyo Sonata’ is a beautifully kept small ‘Kammerspiel-esque’ drama, which is full of the ever-increasing alienation in the relationships between the family members.

Father Ryuhei Sasaki (Teruyuki Kagawa) is fired during a reorganization and does not tell the family members. He pretends to still go to work and roams the city all day. After several days, he stands in line for a free meal and meets an old colleague who is in the same situation. Both keep the appearance of business success at first, his ex-colleague seems to be busy but has a trick by constantly letting his own phone call. Both men keep to the outside world for reasons of status, loss of status counts heavily in Japanese society. Ryuhei constantly tries to maintain his authority by continuing to dominate the family and thus radiate authority. His eldest son Taka is studying and is an outsider who has little contact with his father. Taka wants to enlist in the US military as a volunteer. The youngest son Kenji goes his own way. Kenji has tough confrontations with his teacher at school by Japanese standards. Kenji openly confronts his teacher about the fact that he reads porn books. Kenji does not pay his school lunch money and secretly takes piano lessons, which his father had strictly forbidden him, a fact that will play an important role in later developments. The domestic situation is thus full of parent-son conflicts, but also a marital situation that is not flourishing. Disagreements are suppressed. This entails a lot of subcutaneous tensions that are interwoven in the story in a beautifully cool way. The mother is partly unhappy, patiently and patiently undergoes the behavior of her husband and knows how to keep the family together in a special way.

All the characters in the film somehow hide their real intentions from the other, each more or less chooses his own path and thus secretly tries to escape the existing situation. The way in which everyone does this is beautifully worked out, it is precisely these escape attempts that eventually lead to unexpected liberation for everyone. Nevertheless, not all attempts to escape from living conditions are equally credible and convincing. If the mother is kidnapped at some point, the almost slapstick is temporarily dominant. The film story has been kept nicely small, with maximum use of the atmosphere that fits the typical Asian living conditions and lifestyles. The film has both humorous/almost slapstick-like components, but at the same time also elements of suspense and soap, so that the story has remained in balance. It remains uncertain for a long time how this will end. Does the family collapse dramatically as might be expected in the modest drama of the developments, do they just split up and everyone continues their own path or are there completely other unexpected developments? In the end, the director opted for an ending that is not entirely unexpected for the viewer, but that does fit sensitively into the developments.

The locations are well chosen, the game is sometimes a bit strong, but still convincing. The beautiful camera work in which a suspense-like atmosphere is evoked, the slow and careful construction of the story and the typical Asian atmosphere make this another film for lovers of subtle work.