Tokyo Sonata (2008)

The film tells the story of Ryūhei who is laid off at the start of the movie, due to his company's employment of cheap labour from China. Afraid to tell his wife and family, in fear that he will no longer have the authority and respect that he deserves, he pretends he still has a job and goes to work every day as usual. The film deals with the fear of losing everything one has in life. It deals with themes of dishonesty, pride, anger, fear, anxiety, rejection, suicide, rebellion, starting over, lust and in my personal view, the human need to depend on a system of laws and norms.

In its early stages, the film often tries to depict redundancy in funny moments. I loved the character of Kurosu, who tries to hang on to what he has left by looking busy and setting his mobile phone alarm to ring to show people how busy he is. It reminds me of what I did in the early stages of my redundancy and how it gave me a massive sense of wellbeing. He even invites Ryūhei to dinner, by asking him to act like a colleague at work and discussing a fake business meeting at the dinner table, while his wife and daughter are there. At this dinner, we learn that all is not what it seems and Kurosu's wife knows that something is not right. There is an uncomfortable silence in this scene, which suggests to the viewer that the good manners and politeness that the scene encompasses are only acting as a veil to prevent us from seeing what redundancy has done to this family. It is not long before the film takes a darker, more depressing turn as Kuruso and his wife, commit suicide. In reality it is very sad and true that some people will not survive job loss and will be so ashamed of their position, that they will eventually take their own lives. I think the director is very right to place emphasis on this, as many films that have been made about redundancy in the past, have failed to do so.

Based on my experiences, the film accurately portrays the emotions a person will go through after loss of a job. If I have one criticism of the film it is that it fails to addresses the issue of materialism and spiritual emptiness that many modern day white collar, office jobs encompass. There is an old saying, which I am sure many of the readers are familiar with, which says "the bigger you are the harder you fall". We are all part of a hierarchal society, a 'dog eat dog' world, where we want to go higher up as fast as we possibly can. We want to live under the veil of a middle class, bourgeoisie lifestyle, wear the best suits, have the best hairstyles, drive the best cars, eat the best food and live in the biggest houses. The cost of this though is that there is no guarantee that the profession that you have chosen, despite the fact that you have dedicated your life to it, with love you back but rather will resent you and leave you with nothing. I think that one of the main reasons why Ryūhei struggles with unemployment is his lack of spiritualism and dependence on such a hierarchical role for so long, until he has been made redundant. He is unable to find work, because his skills as a Administrative Director are no longer required. Therefore when he is made redundant, we really get to see how insecure the guy really is, not just in his work life but also his family life. He is the sole money provider in the house but is very rarely there for his wife and kids. He wants to maintain authority in the house and is afraid to lose power, whether it is to his elder son, who despite his parents requests, joins the US military or the young

Fmovies: Tokyo Sonata tells the story of a changing Japanese economy, social culture and employment culture and it effects on family. Here it is excellently told by Kiyoshi Kurosawa (surprisingly no relation to the great Akira Kurosawa).

Ryûhei Sasaki (Teruyuki Kagawa) is a 46-year-old career man living in an industrial area of Tokyo with his family. Early on he looses his job when his department is out sourced to China, and he tries to hire the fact from his wife and children. Ryûhei tries to act normal whilst he spends his day at an employment agency, and waiting in the park with other unemployed people for free food. He meets a former schoolfriend, Kurosu (Kanji Tsuda), who also lost his job and hides the fact from his family. Kurosu gives Ryûhei tips on how to keep the charade, but the stress becomes too great on both men. Ryûhei slowly becomes more bitter and authoritarian at home. Ryûhei's family also suffer their own problems. His youngest son Kenji (Inowaki Kai) has problems in school, coming into conflict with one of his teachers, but he discovers his love and talent for the piano. He secretly takes lessons and his teacher wants him to audition for a music school, but this goes again his father's wishes in a Billy Elliot type sub-plot. Ryûhei older son Takashi (Yû Koyanagi) is more distance from his father, do small jobs, but he plans joining the American military. But again, Ryûhei forbids it, despite Takashi being old enough to make his own decision.

Kiyoshi Kurosawa tells a low-key, but compelling story. He often uses wide shot, giving the audience the feeling like a bystander in these people's lives. Using wide shot forces allows the actors to put real power in their performances with long continuous shots and does not allow the audience to get distracted by continuous editing. Kurosawa is able keep the film going with a fast pace and compelling despite it's low key subject matter. Kurosawa also casted some superb actors who are all wondering in their performances in this film. This is also a film telling some interesting aspects of Japanese culture. The Japanese economy is changing: the notion that someone could have a job for life is disappearing, and that the Japanese economy is suffering the same issues as Anglo-Saxon style economies. The film also acts as a commentary about the Japanese family, where it is portrayed in an old-fashion way, the man runs the house and controls the money, but this system is changing, with the whole family rebelling, and with other Japanese people having a more enlightened view. The third theme is also shown through Takashi about a changing view of America in Japan. The Japanese have in the past had a hostile view to the American military presence in Japan, with incidents like the 1995 Okinawan rape incident, but a younger generation haven't had to suffer this, and the Japanese view of military action is also changing. This film will give you a lot to think about.

Despite these good plots this film is far from perfect. By the end of the second and the beginning of the third act the plot starts to fall apart with some unrealistic events, which ruins the film overall. However Tokyo Sonata is a worthy film, showing that Japanese cinema is one of the best in the world. It also shows that Japanese cinema is more then just anime and violence manga adaptions like Battle Royale, which is also very very good.

Ryūhei a salary man loses his job, and is soon on the scrap heap of the unemployed, a very common and relevant case for so many in these times.

In this case the film documents what it means to be a working man or woman, a case of how a job can define a person. In the case of Ryūhei it's the struggle to maintain that sense of honour and pride that is so ingrained in Japanese culture, that when he is finally let go, he simply packs his belongings from work and walks out-not a word to his colleagues, and not a word to his family.

The next morning he leaves for 'work' donned in the usual work attire spending the day on the fringes of regular life-lining up for free food, sitting in public libraries, roaming the various employment offices for vacancies, then coming home earlier then usual to face the doom of subsequent family expenses (the son wants to take piano lessons, the wife wants a new car, the heater needs to be replaced).

Despite the downward spiral into despair for which this film descends into,there is a feeling of a more hopeful future.

Tokyo Sonata fmovies. After Kiyoshi Kurosawa's film Sakebi (2006), a horror one, comes out his last film Tokyo Sonata in which funny, dramatic, passionate and frustrated attitudes seem to be each one of the characters of the four personages in this film (the husband, the mother, the youngest son and the oldest son respectively) which catches spectator interest through the life of this Japanese middle-class traditional family. With a simply story depicted in Tokyo city and structured with events which show social-economic issues of ordinary people who try to manage without the century present problems, there is no lost for watching Tokyo Sonata. Also, enjoyable the breath of Japanese culture representation.

Admin Chief and family patriarch Sasaki (Teruyuki Kagawa) loses his job to the forces of globalization (the Chinese can fulfill his role cheaper), but keeps it secret from his family. Domesticity, already tense and stifling, teeters on the edge of crisis. Oldest son Takashi, inhabiting a different temporal zone from the rest of the family, looks to find peace by going, quite literally, to war. Youngest son Kenji (Kai Inowaki) harbours escape plans of his own, through a burgeoning musical talent. Even put-upon wife and mother Megumi (Kyoko Koizumi) feels the pressure build inside her, and her escape will be the most dramatic of all.

The first 25 minutes of this tale crackle along in entertaining fashion. The various trials Sasaki faces in his quest for dignified employment are both sobering and amusing. In one sequence the action cuts with perfect timing from Sasaki being asked to perform a capella karaoke at a job interview, to Sasaki beating the hell out of accumulated junk at a soup kitchen. The comic tone is reinforced by the character of Kurosu, Sasaki's high-school classmate, who has turned unemployment and fooling the family into an art form. Or so it seems.

It is the abrupt change in circumstances for the ill-fated Kurosu that ushers in a new, darker tone for the story. At this point the writers go after poetry, with various characters articulating the futility of trying to regain the past. A cameo by Koji Yakusho attempts to reintroduce some comic thread in the second-half, though this serves to make the abrupt end of that particular character arc somewhat incongruous. In short, when the film goes after poetry, it falls flat. Takshi's utterances on Japan-America relations are clunky, and Kenji seems wise far beyond his years in commenting on his piano teacher's divorce. Quite why she chooses to open up to a 10-year-old is also a mystery.

The film throws everyone into crisis, and then brings them back at the end for temporary respite, in a scene that indulges sentimentality beyond acceptable limits. The journeys, not the outcomes, seem to be the thing. Especially Megumi's, in flight from the home to a place at the edge of the world, where she reaches for but can't quite obtain the light. Some will see this as a bold, lyrical choice by the filmmakers. For me it falls flat. Koizumi acts well with what she has been given, all the actors do, but these scenes are hauntingly lit interlopers with lines written by Samuel Beckett that seem to arrive from another film. If you accept that abrupt tone change after the first 25 minutes, you may celebrate this film. I found it too much to take.

Kurosawa films Tokyo evocatively, the family home sandwiched between the ever-present trains and similarly ubiquitous power lines. The acting is mostly top drawer, with only Yu Koyanagi as Takashi failing to keep his end up. The issues addressed are all-too-real for many in present-day Japan, and beyond – Tom Wilkinson's character in The Full Monty faced a similar predicament to Sasaki. Unfortunately, the philosophising in the second half is less than convincing, and the ending far too contrived. Kurosawa has said some of the laughter at Cannes was inappropriate. On the contrary, the decision to ditch the comic thread in the latter sequences of the film, and the non-linear portrayal of events, is where the inappropriacy lies. Five stars for the first half.

In Japan, the unemployment rate reached an historic high of 5.60 in July 2009. Today, over 30% of the work force is still compelled to take casual labor, with more than 5,000 casual workers living in internet cafés because they cannot pay their rent. Statistics, however, do not tell the human story of unemployment. Japanese director Kiyoshi Kurosawa, known for horror movies such as Cure and Pulse, has dramatized the social and psychological effects of Japan's economic woes in Tokyo Sonata, winner of the Un Certain Regard Jury Prize at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival. Shot in the outskirts of Tokyo and backed by the haunting score of Kazumasa Hashimoto, Tokyo Sonata is a brilliant and disturbing film that grips us through outstanding performances and an unsettling social message.

Tokyo Sonata follows Ryuhei Sasaki (Teruyuki Kagawa), a 46-year-old administrator in a Tokyo health care equipment company who loses his job after his department is outsourced to China. Like Vincent in Cantet's 2001 film Time Out, being suddenly without a job is damaging to Ryuhei's pride and he withholds the information from his wife Megumi (Kyoko Koizumi) and their two boys, Takashi (Yu Koyanagi) and 12-year-old Kenji (Kai Inowaki). Struggling to save face and maintain his moral authority, Ryuhei leaves home each morning dressed in a business suit and tie, spending his day standing in long lines looking for work and joining homeless men and other unemployed seeking food at a soup kitchen.

Ryuhei's wife Megumi goes about her routine household chores without complaining and never questions her husband, even when he comes home each night looking increasingly despondent. It is obvious that the layoff has simply crystallized the underlying discontent in the Sasaki family and Kurosawa shows the family eating dinner together in a sterile environment with little or no communication. In an incident at school in Kenji's sixth grade class, Kurosawa also shows how the loss of moral authority can lead to sudden disintegration. After Kenji is admonished by the teacher for passing on another student's manga, the boy insensitively tells the entire class that he witnessed his teacher on the train reading porn, causing chaos in the classroom.

Ryuhei soon discovers that he is not alone. While eating in the park, he meets an old school friend, Kurosu (Kanji Tsuda), who is also unemployed and also has not told his wife. "The lifeboats are gone", he tells Ryuhei, "The water's up to our mouths." Kurosu is engaged in even a bigger deception, programming his cell phone to ring every five minutes to give the impression that he is receiving work-related calls. He later invites Ryuhei to his house for dinner so that he can introduce him to his wife as a co-worker. Ryuhei is interviewed for jobs but none of them are the type of work he is looking for. One prospective employer asks him what he can do and he impulsively answers that he can sing karaoke.

As the charade of pretending to go to work continues, Ryuhei takes his anger and frustration out on Kenji who has become fixated on taking piano lessons. When he learns that the boy has been spending his lunch money on piano lessons, Kenji is beaten and thrown down the stairs, requiring a trip to the hospital. The older son, Takashi, is also severely chastised and asked to leave the house when he tells his parents that he intends to join the U.S. military to fight in the Middle East. From this point, events seem to spiral out of control and, in a jarring twi