Tokyo Story

Year: 1953

Grade: B-

Country: Japan

Director: Ozu

Review

review of the movie is below…this will be a review of the commentary. the commentary track was less than amazing. not to sound too full of myself here, but i picked up about 70% of the stuff that the guy talks about even though i’d seen the movie only once. that may not sound like a lot, but when you’re talking about a film that many consider to be the greatest film of all-time, you come to expect a bit more depth. and if it was there, it wasn’t covered very well by this commentary track. it’s not a bad commentary track – it has a good amount of historical information regarding japan or ozu’s body of work…stuff that one wouldn’t get from just watching the film, but it doesn’t do a very good job of parsing scenes or explaining editing techniques or ozu’s visual style. he describes it fairly well, and talks a bit about why ozu may have employed certain techniques or styles…but nothing that really impressed or educated me. i’m glad i listened to the commentary track, but it’s one of those instances where the reputation of criterion’s special features actually works to its detriment.