Kurosawa translates his expertise in horror to the family drama, revealing that there truly isn't anything scarier than success being defined by domestic rituals we can no longer afford to maintain financially or emotionally.
The winds of change blow as a family grapples with unemployment, alienation, mistrust and a lack of communication. When a Japanese salaryman loses his job to outsourcing to China, it's simply the beginning of a series of shattering incidents, leading to the implosion of the family unit.
Tokyo Sonata is showing in 1 cinema in London - next screening Saturday 17 October at 18:00 at Rio Cinema.
Next screenings: Saturday 17 October.
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Kurosawa translates his expertise in horror to the family drama, revealing that there truly isn't anything scarier than success being defined by domestic rituals we can no longer afford to maintain financially or emotionally.
It's impossible for me to write about this film without seeing it again, because it's effect on me was intensely therapeutic. There are endings in movies like Yi Yi, How Green Was My Valley, Modern Times, Changeling, which reduce me to a blubbering mess of tears. This one joins the group. But there's something different: there is (for me) a profound sadness attached to all of these endings. Here, it's a profound joy, happiness, hope. It's almost incongruous to think of or even get there in a movie that gets as dark as this one does at times, incongruous in a world so corrupt, disjointed, monstrous. Yet there is still the pure beauty of a child who succeeds.
"How wonderful it would be if my whole life so far turns out to have been a dream, and suddenly i wake up and i'm someone else entirely." Kiyoshi Kurosawa is so real for this. I totally get it.
It follows a Japanese family whose lives slowly unravel after the father loses his job to corporate outsourcing.
It was directed by Japanese filmmaker Kiyoshi Kurosawa in 2008.
Yes, the film is in Japanese with English subtitles.
Yes, it won Best Film and Best Screenwriter at the 3rd Asian Film Awards.
