“Tokyo Sonata” begins and ends in calm. But the domestic serenity of the opening minutes mutates into an almost otherworldly placidness by the final shot. Sure, the stress of being alive has body-snatched the Sasakis, the typical middle-class Japanese family at the film’s center. But so has a catastrophe that neither we nor they can readily identify or explain.
This is the world of director Kiyoshi Kurosawa, a strange purveyor of the horrors of being part of the modern Japanese citizenry. Kurosawa, who’s no relation to Akira, can make unsettling music from the rhythms of everyday life. All he needs are two hours.
“Tokyo Sonata” is as good a chance as any to discover him. It’s his most accessible film.
The man of the house, Ryuhei (Teriyuki Kagawa), loses his middle-management job. Rather than tell his wife, Megumi (Kyoko Koizumi), he continues to suit up and head out every morning. Their teenage son, Takashi (Yu Koyanagi), often doesn’t come home until morning and has just announced his plans to join the army. And their fourth-grader, Kenji (Inowaki Kai), wants desperately to play piano.
Reworking a script by Max Mannix, Kurosawa builds a farcical dystopia around these four, especially the couple and their younger son. Mr. Sasaki reluctantly accepts a job doing janitorial work at a mall and lines up alongside the indigent for free lunches. He’s not the only guy overdressed for the occasion; a younger, charismatic unemployed executive (Kanji Tsuda), who befriends him, has turned his apocryphal workday into a lifestyle.
Meanwhile, Kenji foments chaos at school when, caught passing a giant dirty comic book in class, he accuses his teacher of reading porn himself. The students go silent with shock, and when the teacher fails to mount a sufficient defense, the room explodes with gleeful disillusionment.
Mrs. Sasaki has just gotten her driver’s license and goes looking for a car. The sporty number that catches this woman’s eyes is a nifty sight gag.
Men in this world make the money, and they keep the secrets, while the wives have no idea what’s going on with their families. To shake things up, Kurosawa throws in a robbery and hostage taking, committed by a masked man (Koji Yakusho) who can’t make a competent getaway.
“Tokyo Sonata” is about an allergic reaction to the very idea of what it means to be Japanese. The characters misplace their belief in etiquette, politesse, dignity, and propriety — or they struggle to maintain it.
What’s ingenious is not the loss of control but, its eerie return. When a friend of Kenji’s wants to run the country so he can repeal a helmet law, it feels revolutionary. Here a helmet may as well be another form of mind control.
“TOKYO SONATA.”
PG-13 for thematic elements and brief strong language. 2 hours. In Japanese with English subtitles. Directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa; written by Kurosawa, Max Mannix and Sachiko Tanaka; starring Teruyuki Kagawa, Kyoko Koizumi, Yu Koyanagi, Kai Inowaki, Haruka Igawa, and Kanji Tsuda. Opens today at Starz FilmCenter.
