Review of Tokyo Sonata (2008) by Jeffrey C — 03 May 2009

Horror director Kiyoshi (no relation to Akira) Kurosawa tries to make a level-headed, realistic docudrama about a crumbling family, but his instincts for over-the-top dramatics get the better of him about halfway through the 120 tedious minutes of "Tokyo Sonata". At first the title is ironic as the breadwinner for the Sasaki family, Ryuhei, loses his job as an office drone and keeps it a secret from his uninterested family. As long as he has money to give to his wife and 6th grader son, nobody seems to mind much. He must hang out in libraries and free lunch lines with his unemployed suit-wearing pal, who has a moronic method of dealing with his social status (complete denial). The wife's only obligation is to hover around in the background and make dinner, so the three of them can eat in awkward silence. Fairly depressing material even before everyone starts hiding secrets and compulsively lying to one another. The kid finds a broken electronic keyboard in a trash pile, brings it home to find it doesn't work, but proceeds to practice piano in near-silence, the only sound being the hollow, plastic noise of keys being pressed. Dad forbids piano lessons, kid pays for them with lunch money, etc.

Around the time the bleak tedium of daily life is shattered with the news that little Kenji's the reincarnation of Ludwig Van Beethoven, and Ryuhei must take a job cleaning up a shopping mall in an orange suit, the story loses all plausibility and becomes increasingly metaphorical and preachy. Points are made through unlikely coincidences, grand strokes of luck, flashbacks, and an idiotic knife wielding burglar who the wife may or may not be falling in love with. At one hysterical climax, we're crosscutting between three separate dramatic crescendos: the kid running through town with an asthmatic buddy; the mom in an adorable hostage situation driving a stolen Peugeot; Dad, holding an envelope of cash, looking for a truck to hurl himself in front of. He's been the latest victim of Implausible Coincidence, having run into his wife while "on the job" in his mall, one of the dozens of malls in bloody Tokyo, who just happens to be in there buying munchies for her paramour (erstwhile burglar, breaker and enterer, a generally crazy person). Then the kid gets arrested for trying to fare-hop on a Greyhound.

If "Tokyo Sonata" had ended there, with the familial unit in complete, irreversibly fucked up disorder, it would have been more in line with its earlier passages having to do with the undermining of authority and ruthless expenditure of "unskilled personnel". Dad's lying in a gutter, literally representing human waste, Junior's rotting in a prison cell, Mom's just "baptized" herself in a low tide. But no, two more reels are spent tying up every conceivable loose end and tacking a faux-inspirational, hopelessly awful conclusion to a wretched third act. Was the addition of a second son, fighting with American forces in the Middle East, useful or helpful to the story? All it necessitates is "meaningful" glances at the TV news whenever they mention the Troop Surge in Iraq, instantly dating the film. A classically Bullshit ending at a piano recital/audition uses some Debussy to get the tears swelling. Failing at that, of course; the silence of the Japanese audience at the recital is meant to show respect. The silence of the audience after "Tokyo Sonata" indicated little else above boredom.