The cast list of "Tokyo Story"

Like his usual style, Yasujiro's films are still based on the daily life of ordinary Japanese families. Japanese traditional behaviors and customs are subtly permeated in the whole work. The daily life, words and deeds of the characters are full of Japanese flavor. Under Ozu's arrangement, even the old couple stayed everywhere in strict accordance with the order of young and old. At the same time, the film also shows the new problems that gradually emerged in post-war Japanese society with the acceleration of modernization. The children were too busy to spend time with the elderly, so they paid for a trip to Rehai. The differences between the two generations' concepts are displayed here, and the problem of social aging is also emerging. The gap between grandchildren and kind grandparents reveals the change of social structure-the traditional big family with multiple generations living under one roof is gradually being replaced by the small family with two generations living under one roof. In the light daily life, Ozu showed us the contradiction between modernity and tradition.

On the other hand, Ozu also reflects the more common theme of human life and death in this film. There is nothing strange or wonderful about Ozu's handling of this theme, except that he linked three generations of a family with the old couple's trip to visit relatives, which triggered the sudden death of a character. These are all things that can happen to everyone in life. It is this sense of reality close to life that triggers emotions and makes people feel something.

There are no villains in the characters in the film. Some characters always smile when they speak. Even the slightly indifferent eldest son and outspoken and stingy eldest daughter are sincere in taking care of their elderly parents, and their attitude and performance are considerate and understandable. In this plain and profound film, Ozu doesn't want to criticize or attack anything, but calmly presents social and life problems to the audience in his own unique way. This practice of grasping the characteristics of the times and excavating the connotation of life with a small starting point is exactly the uniqueness of Master Ozu. Director Yasujiro has a strict shooting technique. He pays special attention to the composition of the picture and likes to shoot with a fixed camera to avoid the composition being damaged by the shaking of the camera. Take the scene of the child sitting around his mother's body in the film as an example. Several characters are scattered, and everyone is sitting in the same direction, forming a static aesthetic feeling. As the plot progresses, some people join and some people leave, but the picture always keeps the original composition.

Ozu also likes to put the camera close to the ground and shoot at an elevation angle. This unique style of Ozu can be strongly felt from the scene of Zhou Ji watching the sunrise after his wife died and the scene of many people sitting on tatami.

From time to time, you can see some scenes that purely show big chimneys, apartment buildings, tombstone forests and so on. This is also one of the manifestations of Ozu style. He often inserts scenes between paragraphs of films as transitions and hints at the content behind.

The characters in the film basically have no violent movements, and the feelings of the characters are exquisitely displayed from subtle expressions and dialogues. This directing style of Ozu matches the content and theme of his films, so his works are full of quiet and dynamic, subtle and real interests of lightness and taste.