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Tokyo-Ga [VHS]

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With the only exception of the Frenchmen who have employed the literature to express their immense gratitude and admiration to Jean Renoir with the excel essay of Andre Bazin whose prologue written by Francois Truffaut, we must admit no other country has paid such emotive homage to the figure of an emblematic personality of the cinema.

For instance, we have no documental in homage to David Ward Griffith, the supreme genius of the north American cinema, despite of the fact the huge artistic debt the future filmmakers have with him. From Welles to Scorsesse himself.

Win Wenders begins the film with these admirable, sincere and emotive words of introduction: " if in our century there's still some sacred thing, if there's was something like the sacred treasure of the cinema, then for me would have to be the work of the Japanese director Yasujiro Ozu".

I would dare to say that until that moment (because after this documental Tarkovsky, Dreyer and Kurosawa had not been done yet). For the cinema lovers this is luxury. For the common spectator it's a must-have.

Wenders takes a look around Tokyo, trying without success, part of what Tokyo was for Ozu. He interviews two key personages who worked with Ozu. The actor Ryu and his director's assistant. This last interview achieved to commove even the toughest of the viewers, due the expressive naturalness it was made.

Specially relevant are two encounters with two brilliant filmmakers. Werner Herzog who talks him about the missing purity and transparency of the images around our planet and the elusive encounter with Chris Maker.

Despite of the fact Win visits Ozu's grave, he makes an incisive gaze over the unknown Tokyo, its costumes and hobbies, its untamed passion for the golf, the gastronomy, the American influence with a dignity and absolute candidness, the camera travels by the nocturnal and the sunny Tokyo. The trains employed by Ozu all along his films.

A majestic, mesmerizing and unforgettable homage in memory of one the greatest poets of the cinema: Yasujiro Ozu.

This frustratingly uneven documentary (or "diary film" in the director's terminology) was filmed in 1983, the same year as the director's Paris, Texas. It is billed as German director Wim Wenders' tribute to Japanese film giant Yasujiro Ozu whose films Wenders describes in dithyrambic prose: "As thoroughly Japanese as they are, these films are at the same time universal," intones the voice-over. "For me, never before and never again since has the cinema been so close to its essence and its purpose: to present an image of man in our century, a usable, true and valid image in which he not only recognizes himself, but from which above all he may learn about himself."

That's quite a mouthful. Yet Ozu's admirers would not likely find it extravagant. In the pantheon of Japanese directors, Ozu, along with Kurosawa and Mizoguchi, form a triumvirate of artists considered the masters of classical Japanese cinema.

It is unfortunate, then, that in fact only about half of Tokyo-ga has anything remotely to do with Ozu: there are clips from Ozu's signature films (with subtitles in French), an interview with Chishu Ryu a leading actor in Ozu's early films, a visit to Ozu's grave in a Kamakura cemetery, and an interview with his cameraman for thirty-odd years.

The remainder of the film is made up of vignettes of mundane and bizarre scenes from Tokyo, a Tokyo profoundly changed, at least on the surface, in the 30 years since Ozu's last film. At one point Wenders concedes that the Tokyo he documents is not the same city peopled by Ozu's characters: "The more the reality of Tokyo struck me as a torrent of unkind, impersonal, threatening--yes, even inhuman images--the greater and more powerful became in my mind the loving and ordered world of the mythical city of Tokyo that I knew from the films of Yasujiro Ozu."

Not that this footage of Tokyo during the boom years isn't interesting in its own right. A visit to a rooftop driving range documents Japan's national passion/mania for the alien sport of golf. There is a hilarious segment on the "Tokyo Rockabilly Club"--teenage Elvis wannabees who dress in fifties greaser clothes and practice the twist and other retro dance steps.

In another sequence the crew visits a shop where artisans fashion the realistic imitation food made of wax that is displayed in Japanese restaurant windows.

None of this has much to do with Ozu, whose films deal with Japanese family issues, especially the pressure on women to marry, and to defer to family in the choice of a marriage partner (traditional arranged marriage vs. `ren-ai kekkon,' or love marriage), and with the crumbling of traditional Japanese values in the postwar years.

I was annoyed that Wenders followed the widespread practice of superimposing a voice-over translation on Chishu Ryuu's interview, thereby obliterating the original priceless historical document. On the other hand, later in the film director Werner Herzog goes on at length in German with no translation or subtitles.

Ozu fans will find the relevant parts of this film interesting, especially the interview with Ozu's cameraman. Others should probably pass on this one, unless it is to see footage of the city during the boom years. For a fairer assessment of Wenders' artistry and sensitivity, watch his Paris Texas instead.

This film is about the Japanese director Yasujiro Ozu, sort of. Wim Wenders, the director of "Tokyo-Ga," is a great admirer of Ozu's work, and cites it as a big source of inspiration. So, in "Tokyo-Ga," Wenders travels to Japan, in order to learn something about Ozu's life and method of work. More than that, he wants to understand Ozu's mind. What did Ozu want to express in his films? How did he view the world?

But as it turns out, this film is not about Ozu so much as it is about Wenders. "Tokyo-Ga" belongs to a class of films that we might call "intellectual documentaries," or "film essays" if you prefer. Such a film may nominally be about some non-fictional subject, but its real purpose is to voice its own director's philosophical points.

So it's no surprise that Chris Marker has a cameo appearance halfway through the film. He has nothing to do with Ozu, of course, but he is an acclaimed practitioner of precisely this kind of style. Actually, his film "Sans Soleil" is very similar to this one, right down to the use of Japan as a setting. Wenders probably put the cameo in this film to acknowledge this similarity.

Thus, when Wenders goes to Japan, he doesn't start telling us about Ozu. Instead, he goes to a pachinko parlor. His camera fixes on the pachinko machines for what seems like an eternity. While the players gaze at the machines, Wenders surmises that pachinko helped the Japanese nation recover from its defeat in World War II. They didn't want to think about the war, he says, so they invented this monotonous activity to kill time.

Wenders also goes to a stadium where people are playing golf. Actually, they're not really playing golf, they're just hitting golf balls into the stadium because there isn't enough room in Tokyo to build a big golf course. Again, Wenders' camera stares at the playing field, fascinated by the flying balls. Wenders marvels at these inscrutable people with their inscrutable ways.

Then Wenders meets a fellow film-maker, Werner Herzog. Herzog rants for a long time about how humanity needs to find new and exciting images. He complains that there are no exciting images in Tokyo. Herzog doesn't like the skyscrapers. He thinks that life in Tokyo is stifling, and that the inhabitants of such a city are boring.

Well, Herzog is a supremely talented speaker, so it's a lot of fun to watch him while he's talking. But what does all this have to do with Ozu?

First of all, Ozu was the most non-analytic director who ever lived. The storylines in his films are so straightforward as to defy any kind of analysis. Ozu truthfully showed certain kinds of relationships, mostly between members of a family. He depicted natural acts without looking for any kind of rational basis for them. In comparison, Wenders' discussion of pachinko looks totally artificial.

Second, the mystical approach to Ozu is even less satisfactory than the rational approach. So when Wenders gazes raptly at the golf stadium, he just looks shallow. Ozu never made a show of marveling at people from his vantage point high above. He never separated himself from them.

Third, Herzog is a fine film-maker, but he doesn't weather the contrast with Ozu either. Ozu had no trouble finding something to make films about in Tokyo. But Herzog, for all his talent, is not very compassionate as a director. In his appearance here, his philosophy sounds arrogant and contemptuous. He wants big images and great ideas, but the lives of individuals in Tokyo are not valuable to him. Well, he often says that he doesn't value the so-called "accountant's truth" of realist film-making, and instead prefers an "ecstatic truth." But is the ecstatic truth really all that meaningful, if it's so cold to people?

The only thing that these disparate scenes show is that Wenders isn't half the film-maker that Ozu was. So where does that leave the film?

The best parts of "Tokyo-Ga" are the ones where Wenders actually talks about Ozu. In particular, Wenders interviews Ozu's cinematographer, as well as Ozu's favourite actor. They relate a couple of stories about Ozu's life. But these scenes don't contain a lot of information. They are interesting only because they show how much Ozu was loved and revered by his associates. Chishu Ryu, the actor, denies that he has any talent at all, and says that if he ever achieved anything, it was only because of Ozu's direction.

Wenders also visits Ozu's grave. It's marked by a small black stone that only has one character engraved on it. This character can be read as "nothingness." Wenders finds this to be very significant, but fails to say anything of note about it. In the end, he leaves Tokyo brooding over how he couldn't manage to understand Ozu. That's not surprising, since it seems that Wenders spent most of his time in Tokyo listening to the sound of his own voice.

So, on the subject of Yasujiro Ozu's life and work, "Tokyo-Ga" is thoroughly useless. If you want to find out something about Ozu, I'd recommend the Criterion release of "Tokyo Story." It comes with a bonus DVD containing a brief documentary about Ozu's life and a series of short testimonials by other directors (including Wenders) about how much Ozu influenced them. But "Tokyo-Ga" isn't really about Ozu, it's about Wenders. It's a pity that Wenders is much less interesting.