Tokyo-Ga [VHS]

Tokyo-Ga [VHS]
by Wim Wenders

Category: VHS Video
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Product details

Actor: Chishu Ryu, Chris Marker, Werner Herzog, Yuuharu Atsuta
Director: Wim Wenders
Edition: VHS Tape
Audio: English (Original Language), Analog; German (Original Language); Japanese (Original Language)
Format: NTSC

VHS Movie Reviews of Tokyo-Ga [VHS]

Movie Review: When many words are spoken and nothing is said.
Summary: 2 Stars

This film is about the Japanese director Yasujiro Ozu, sort of. Wim Wenders, the director of "Tokyo-Ga," is a great admirer of Ozu's work, and cites it as a big source of inspiration. So, in "Tokyo-Ga," Wenders travels to Japan, in order to learn something about Ozu's life and method of work. More than that, he wants to understand Ozu's mind. What did Ozu want to express in his films? How did he view the world?

But as it turns out, this film is not about Ozu so much as it is about Wenders. "Tokyo-Ga" belongs to a class of films that we might call "intellectual documentaries," or "film essays" if you prefer. Such a film may nominally be about some non-fictional subject, but its real purpose is to voice its own director's philosophical points.

So it's no surprise that Chris Marker has a cameo appearance halfway through the film. He has nothing to do with Ozu, of course, but he is an acclaimed practitioner of precisely this kind of style. Actually, his film "Sans Soleil" is very similar to this one, right down to the use of Japan as a setting. Wenders probably put the cameo in this film to acknowledge this similarity.

Thus, when Wenders goes to Japan, he doesn't start telling us about Ozu. Instead, he goes to a pachinko parlor. His camera fixes on the pachinko machines for what seems like an eternity. While the players gaze at the machines, Wenders surmises that pachinko helped the Japanese nation recover from its defeat in World War II. They didn't want to think about the war, he says, so they invented this monotonous activity to kill time.

Wenders also goes to a stadium where people are playing golf. Actually, they're not really playing golf, they're just hitting golf balls into the stadium because there isn't enough room in Tokyo to build a big golf course. Again, Wenders' camera stares at the playing field, fascinated by the flying balls. Wenders marvels at these inscrutable people with their inscrutable ways.

Then Wenders meets a fellow film-maker, Werner Herzog. Herzog rants for a long time about how humanity needs to find new and exciting images. He complains that there are no exciting images in Tokyo. Herzog doesn't like the skyscrapers. He thinks that life in Tokyo is stifling, and that the inhabitants of such a city are boring.

Well, Herzog is a supremely talented speaker, so it's a lot of fun to watch him while he's talking. But what does all this have to do with Ozu?

First of all, Ozu was the most non-analytic director who ever lived. The storylines in his films are so straightforward as to defy any kind of analysis. Ozu truthfully showed certain kinds of relationships, mostly between members of a family. He depicted natural acts without looking for any kind of rational basis for them. In comparison, Wenders' discussion of pachinko looks totally artificial.

Second, the mystical approach to Ozu is even less satisfactory than the rational approach. So when Wenders gazes raptly at the golf stadium, he just looks shallow. Ozu never made a show of marveling at people from his vantage point high above. He never separated himself from them.

Third, Herzog is a fine film-maker, but he doesn't weather the contrast with Ozu either. Ozu had no trouble finding something to make films about in Tokyo. But Herzog, for all his talent, is not very compassionate as a director. In his appearance here, his philosophy sounds arrogant and contemptuous. He wants big images and great ideas, but the lives of individuals in Tokyo are not valuable to him. Well, he often says that he doesn't value the so-called "accountant's truth" of realist film-making, and instead prefers an "ecstatic truth." But is the ecstatic truth really all that meaningful, if it's so cold to people?

The only thing that these disparate scenes show is that Wenders isn't half the film-maker that Ozu was. So where does that leave the film?

The best parts of "Tokyo-Ga" are the ones where Wenders actually talks about Ozu. In particular, Wenders interviews Ozu's cinematographer, as well as Ozu's favourite actor. They relate a couple of stories about Ozu's life. But these scenes don't contain a lot of information. They are interesting only because they show how much Ozu was loved and revered by his associates. Chishu Ryu, the actor, denies that he has any talent at all, and says that if he ever achieved anything, it was only because of Ozu's direction.

Wenders also visits Ozu's grave. It's marked by a small black stone that only has one character engraved on it. This character can be read as "nothingness." Wenders finds this to be very significant, but fails to say anything of note about it. In the end, he leaves Tokyo brooding over how he couldn't manage to understand Ozu. That's not surprising, since it seems that Wenders spent most of his time in Tokyo listening to the sound of his own voice.

So, on the subject of Yasujiro Ozu's life and work, "Tokyo-Ga" is thoroughly useless. If you want to find out something about Ozu, I'd recommend the Criterion release of "Tokyo Story." It comes with a bonus DVD containing a brief documentary about Ozu's life and a series of short testimonials by other directors (including Wenders) about how much Ozu influenced them. But "Tokyo-Ga" isn't really about Ozu, it's about Wenders. It's a pity that Wenders is much less interesting.

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