Tokyo Story

Setsuko Hara anchors one of the greatest of all Japanese films with one of the greatest of all performances, as a warm-hearted, becalmed, yet utterly determined young woman. Tokyo Story is about the gap between generations in a Japanese family. It tells a simple, sad story of an elderly couple who travel to Tokyo to visit their two married children, only to find themselves politely ushered off to a hot springs resort. There, the mother dies, leaving only their widowed daughter-in-law (Hara) to care for the father. “Two generations, a simple story that allows all the characters to change places, a pervading delineation of high summer, and the deceptive simplicity of the film’s style—all these combine to create a picture so Japanese and at the same time so personal, and hence so universal in its appeal, that it becomes a masterpiece” (Donald Richie).