Product Details

• Actors: Teruyuki Kagawa, Kyôko Koizumi, Yû Koyanagi, Kai Inowaki, Haruka Igawa
• Directors: Kiyoshi Kurosawa
• Writers: Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Max Mannix, Sachiko Tanaka
• Producers: Michael J. Werner, Raymond Phathanavirangoon, Wouter Barendrecht, Yasushi Kotani, Yuki'e Kitô
• Format: AC-3, Color, Dolby, DVD, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Language: Japanese
• Subtitles: English
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rated: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Studio: E1 Entertainment
• DVD Release Date: May 4, 2010
• Run Time: 120 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B0037FFBCM
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #49,110 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
• For more information about "Tokyo Sonata" visit the Internet Movie Database (IMDb)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s new drama, Tokyo Sonata, is a chilly portrait of contemporary familial life in Japan. Known for his horror films (Retribution, Pulse, Charisma), Kurosawa here injects a nightmarish separation between members of the Sasaki family, for a film that is psychically horrific but not at all fantasy-based. In it, the Sasakis unravel after father, Ryuhei (Teruyuki Kagawa), loses his job and continues to feign employment as he heads out each morning in suit, tie, and briefcase. Housewife Megumi (Kyoko Koizumi), suspects his lie, but struggles herself with their jaded teenager, Takashi (Yu Koyanagi), and her young, shy son, Kenji (Kai Inowaki), who resorts to secret piano lessons for creative outlet in a family where it is strictly forbidden by the father. As everyone senses Ryuhei’s deception and rebels increasingly against his hypocrisy, the viewer begins to understand how vital honesty is in a household. Tokyo Sonata is a wonderful example of new realism in Japanese cinema; dialogue and pacing feels as true as Yasuhiro Ozu’s family dramas. There are lovely shots throughout, many through glass sliding doors and windshields, where landscapes are reflected over character close-ups, in what appears to be natural lighting. Most importantly, Tokyo Sonata, though slow in parts, has a sense of humor. Ryuhei’s unemployed friend, Kurosu (Kanji Tsuda), has an elaborate cover-up for his joblessness that includes physical comedy, like when he fumbles to answer fake business calls on his cell phone “five times per hour." Moments like these transform depictions of what would be unbearably pathetic circumstances into entertainment. --Trinie Dalton

Product Description

Ashamed after unexpectedly losing his job, Ryuhei decides to keep his news a secret. His lies and personal torment go unnoticed by his family, whose lives are also quickly unraveling. Directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa.

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Kurosawa's best film in years., August 27, 2009

By 

Robert P. Beveridge "xterminal" (Lakewood, OH) - See all my reviews
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Tokyo Sonata (Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 2008)

Kiyoshi Kurosawa branded himself one of the great new breed of Japanese filmmakers in the mid-nineties with Cure and Charisma, two of the best Japanese film of the last half of the last century. After spending some time directing horror films, which seems almost obligatory for Japanese directors these days (with a quick break in 2003 for the wonderful Bright Future), he has shown that he's still capable of directing some of modern Japan's best films with Tokyo Sonata.

Ryuhei Sasaki (Hero's Teruyuki Kagawi), unsatisfied with the direction his company is taking, walks out on his position as the head of the administration department. While this is initially a liberating thing, he quickly runs into the big question: how's he going to tell his wife Megumi (Kyoko Koizumi, recently of Adrift in Tokyo)? This is not an uncommon question for salarymen who have quit, or lost, their jobs in Tokyo, it seems; the park where day laborers go to pick up work is chock full of guys in three-piece suits just like Sasaki. In fact, one day he meets an old school chum of his, Kurosu (The Great Yokai War's Kanji Tsuda, who also acts opposite Kagawi in the 20th Century Boys film series), in the food line. The two of them make a pact to help the other hide their unemployment from their families, but Sasaki quickly learns the truth of the matter--everyone knows Kurosu is unemployed except his wife. Sasaki fears the same may be true of his two sons, Takashi (Clearness' Yu Koyanagi) and Kenji (Inowaki Kai in his first screen appearance), but it seems his family is too busy falling apart to notice. Takashi is convinced his destiny lies with joining the American military, while Kenji is obsessed with the idea of learning to play the piano, a discipline his father strictly forbids (one of the film's few shortcomings is that the why of this is not clear; I inferred he thinks it's a girly thing to do, but I'm not entirely sure). With all the pieces in place, Kurosawa simply lets them fall where they may.

The reasons I spent my time watching this thinking about Yasujiro Ozu's great Tokyo Story have more substance to them than the obvious title parallel, but I'm not sure how easy it's going to be to put them into words. It's not so much a style or a feel as it is an emotion; that same feeling of resolution in the face of existential despair, or even terror. There are other, more obvious parallels, such as the caliber of the actors (watch for Inowaki Kai, for if his performance here can be used as a benchmark, he's the next Tadanobu Asano) and Kurosawa's finely-detailed direction, but whereas Ozu was interested in telling a straightforward, simple story, Kurosawa can never resist taking things out to their logical, and often glorious, conclusion. If you've seen any of Kurosawa's movies, you'll know that things tend to go nuts about two-thirds of the way through the film. Tokyo Sonata is no exception to the rule, as everyone involved in this drama pretty much snaps (save Takashi, but that's another story). Everything blows up, and in another of those touches that make Kurosawa such an amazing director, the events at the end of the movie are in no way ambiguous; the ambiguity arises from the viewer trying to decide whether it's a happy ending or not. That's pretty amazing.

Tokyo Sonata cements Kurosawa's place at the top of the heap, assuming such a thing was still necessary. Very few Japanese directors are capable of this level of work, especially on as consistent a basis as Kurosawa delivers. And trust me, you'll ever see anything that manages to be both this ludicrous and yet this noble at the same time. This is a movie that will stay with you a long, long time after you pop the DVD out--or, if you're lucky enough to manage it, after you leave the cinema. One of the first truly great movies of the new millennium. **** ½

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars What would it take to start over? - Kiyoshi Kurosawa's latest may be his best, September 12, 2009

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Nathan Andersen "film lover, philosophy profe... (Florida) - See all my reviews
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Kiyoshi Kurosawa's latest film speaks directly to contemporary issues, that are relevant both in Japan and around the world: the economic crisis and corporate downsizing, a growing identity crisis within the so-called "nuclear family," increasing uncertainty regarding gender roles, and political uncertainties in the wake of terrorist scares and the wars in the Middle East. When a large corporation decides to ship most of its jobs oversees to China with its less expensive labor force, a middle manager is left without a job and without a clue how he can break it to his wife without losing face. So he decides not to tell her. It turns out he's not alone. As he discovers, there are hordes of out-of-work businessmen who also couldn't break it to their wives and pretend to go to work but wind up wandering parks and loitering daily in lounges, until they can safely return home without arousing suspicion. This is an alternately heartbreaking, horrific and funny film about the slow unravelling of a family, that remains together only to maintain appearances, and raises the question whether there is any possibility of starting over, of becoming a new person, of choosing for oneself rather than living by habit and to keep up appearances, and especially if such a thing is possible in an increasingly uncertain political and economic climate.

K. Kurosawa (no relation to Akira) is best known for his horror-themed films, and is responsible for some of the very best of the so-called "J-horror" films (Cure, Pulse, Retribution). His real interest, even in those films, seems to be more with what we think of as ordinary life, the unsettling feeling that arises when the ordinary breaks down due to social and personal changes, when the everyday no longer makes sense. Even in his horror films the most unsettling moments tend not to be those when the supernatural monster (ghost, apparition, serial killer) appears, but when a protagonist begins to suspect his own guilt or complicity with the horror, and after that the ordinary routines are no longer a refuge or comfort. Home becomes unwelcoming and uncanny. Friends and loved ones become strangers. Another thing about Kurosawa is that while he is able to create real and palpable dread, and genuine fear, he is also a master of creating the uncomfortable laugh that arises when something utterly unexpected occurs. As scary as some of his horror films are, they are also often very funny, but it is the humor of the absurd and the subtle surreal, akin to the humor in works by Bunuel but not quite so blunt, rather than the humor of the silly. He also seems to delight in the "red herring" -- elements that seem to mark a turning point but end up amounting to nothing -- as here when Ryuhei (the father) finds a large packet of money that might turn his life around but then spends the night in a roadside ditch.

What Kurosawa does with horror (and other related genre) films is to deliver what is expected from the genre (scares, thrills, etc.) but in unexpected ways. He takes the cliches (as in Pulse when the heroines find themselves compelled against all reason to go into the house where the horror resides) and turns them on their heads, showing that they are absurd and not at all inevitble but finding some way to make them fit. Here he takes the "family crisis drama" and delivers the goods, exactly the kinds of life's lessons and reconciliations you'd expect, but by a route that no one could predict and in part this is because he channels the emotional elements of that drama in ways that draw upon his mastery of the unsettling and absurd. This film, in which there are no explicitly supernatural or horrific elements (unless you count the downsized middle managers who wander the back allies and parks of Tokyo like zombies in suits, in their efforts to keep up appearances), is as laugh-out-loud funny and at times as creepy as any of his other films, but there is a greater warmth here, a depth of humanism and sympathy for the lost individuals at the heart of the story that I haven't felt as strongly in his other works. It is, probably, his most touching film, and possibly the most technically brilliant. Stylistically at moments and thematically throughout, the film bears comparison to Ozu and especially to his own Tokyo Story that also explored generational gaps and the effects of economic change on the structure of the family. Much of the film, especially the parts takes place in the Sasaki home, is shot in a series of simple compositions, capturing household rituals through windows and door frames. These mostly static shots are complemented by much more rough, handheld point of view shots that hesitate and stumble uncertaintly, as if their bearers did not know where to look and no longer recognize what they are looking at.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Tokyo Sonata, January 8, 2011

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Spider Monkey (UK) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Tokyo Sonata [Blu-ray] (Blu-ray)

`Tokyo Sonata' is a very understated, yet strangely moving film.

It is gentle and slightly sad and follows a Japanese family, which includes an undervalued wife, a proud husband who loses his job but goes out each day as if he still has one and hides it from family and a son who is desperate to lean piano despite having to secretly use his lunch money to pay for lessons.

In a very bare and pared back style you experience their dreams and failures and the inner turmoil behind their everyday lives. In the main this film has no obvious musical soundtrack to augment the scenes which makes it feel more stark and sad somehow. This contrasts powerfully with the few scenes with piano playing which make these scenes soar and resonate that much more strongly than they normally would.

Everyone acts extremely well and the direction draws out every detail and nuance in the various scenes. Japanese film are noted for their attention to detail and the small touches that show a deeper meaning and this film is no exception.

I was unsure what to expect from this film and whilst it is slow paced and doesn't spell out every emotion or feeling (like many American films tend to do) this is immensely satisfying and leaves you feeling uplifted and calm at the same time. If you are fond of world cinema or Japanese films in general then you really must check this out at some point.

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