The trouble with notoriously prolific directors is that it’s often difficult to discern what their best film may be, since they usually direct at such a rapid pace, and end up producing many great films. However, when it comes to Yasujirō Ozu, it couldn’t be easier to answer this question. Tokyo Story (Japanese: 東京物語) is almost universally considered to be the esteemed director’s masterpiece, with only the smallest minority of rebellious souls claiming otherwise. This is the film that cemented Ozu, who was already a vitally important filmmaker, in the cinematic canon as one of the greatest to ever work in the medium. Not only is this his finest achievement, it is one of the greatest films ever made, another concept that many audiences, critics and members of the industry share. It’s his peak as an artist, and the film that best encapsulates everything that made him such an important cinematic figure, somehow who (along with a small handful of his equally-esteemed peers) redefined Japanese cinema and brought it to a global audience, who continue to look at films such as this in awe and wonder, completely bewildered at how something so poetic could be produced from such a minimalistic, simple premise. Tokyo Story is a vitally important piece of filmmaking, both in terms of looking at issues relating to postwar Japanese society (a subject I’ve spoken about at length when it comes to Ozu) and more personal, intimate issues that come through in the form of the director’s penchant for character-driven drama, where simple storytelling is boosted by his distinct manner of looking at the lives of ordinary people.

The very act of putting words to Tokyo Story is intimidating – this is a film that has left countless viewers speechless over the years, myself included. It’s tough to describe exactly how Ozu achieves this very visceral, emotional response – the film isn’t a massive departure for the director (in fact, it’s the most vivid example of his style), nor is it particularly challenging in the way that other films that tend to leave audiences stunned do. Everything that Ozu does here is drawn from his intimate understanding of the human condition – absolutely no other filmmaker has ever been able to capture the raw sensation of simply being alive with more precision than him. His films may be simple and never deviate too far in terms of tone or theme, but they are all vivid deconstructions of life in its various forms, some veering towards sweetly sentimental comedy, others haunting drama – and Tokyo Story exists at the perfect intersection between the two, functioning as the poignant human epic that the director was always meant to make, and which subsequently defined his long and prolific career more than anything else he ever managed to make. The amount of detail contained within this film, and Ozu’s methods of quietly pulling apart the layers of human existence and revealing the raw truths at its core, make for a compelling account of life, taken right from the most sincere source. It’s difficult to imagine any other filmmaker who showed such deep and undying devotion to the simple art of portraying existence than Ozu, who frequently challenges the viewer to look beneath the surface and find something deeper within the fabric of our lives. This is all par for the course in terms of what the director was known to do, and is the foundation on which this film is built, functioning as precisely the element that makes it such an absolutely revelatory piece of filmmaking.

Such an absolute opinion doesn’t come easily, since there’s always the possibility of being proven wrong – yet, it’s impossible to be anything other than thoroughly confident in the merits of this film as being the director’s magnum opus, the masterpiece that stands head and shoulders above anything else he made, which still existing in dialogue with his other works. Occurring roughly in the middle of his filmmaking career, which extended from the silent era to the early 1960s, Tokyo Story is Ozu’s peak in terms of being both his greatest achievement, and the film around which every single other film he made orbits – it’s the convergence of his previous work, and the inspiration behind his later work, every theme that would occur in the final eight films he made in his career (which many consider to be amongst his finest as well), being filtered through the lens of this one, which doesn’t only serve to be a captivating story all on its own, but a loosely-defined manifesto on life itself, provoking thought and inciting conversations that aren’t always completed here, but rather direct us towards another one of Ozu’s films that may elaborate on these ideas. This is perhaps the reason why Tokyo Story is so cherished – it stands on its own as a masterful achievement, but also inspires us to engage with the director’s other work as well, seeking it out to see more of these deep and insightful conversations. We’re eased into this world that the director seems so intent on exploring, and we never feel lost, even when the material can be quite culture-specific – and as the plot develops, we feel as if we’re slowly becoming a part of this family at the heart of the story, a sensation that Ozu has always been remarkably adept at portraying.

This is a film fully in communion with those that exist around it – both from within the director’s own oeuvre, and that of his contemporaries (particularly the likes of Mikio Naruse and Heinosuke Gosho, who adopted similarly minimalistic approaches to their stories), there is a conversation occurring across the medium that speaks to a deeper sense of resolving the postwar experience. However, rather than explicitly mentioning it in such a way that it guides the entire narrative, Ozu instead uses the art of implication to situate this film and make it clear that it is filtered through the lens of discussing the impact of the war, but in a way that isn’t ever heavy-handed. The death of one of the characters (whose demise occurs before the events in the film) is the only direct mention of the Second World War, and even in this capacity, it is less of a case of the director commenting on the conflict itself, and more on the feeling of loss, which is one of the many themes we see punctuating Tokyo Story. This film tells the story of a country radically changing, both physically (the expansion of cities, the repurposing of previously unused space) and mentally, which is something that most postwar films, whether comedic or dramatic, accounted for, particularly through the characters we encounter. Ozu has a firm control of the narrative movements, making sure that every moment reflects the deep and earnest understanding of the human condition and its relation to the trauma of conflict – but it is never once exploitative, with the director commanding every frame with the aching, poetic brilliance that has always been his signature quality, holding our attention from beginning to end.

Tokyo Story is a film that countless critics and academics have written about over the years – it has only seemingly increased in acclaim throughout the decades, and continues to be considered one of the defining works of not only Japanese filmmaking, but cinema in general. There’s nothing anyone can say that will do anything other than contribute to the general conversation around this film’s status as an absolute masterpiece. This makes the job of later writers even more difficult -how do you proclaim Tokyo Story an absolute masterpiece without just repeating the same resounding hosannas that have followed it since the 1950s? The answer is, you can’t – everything that has been said about this film on a theoretical and cinematic level has been well-documented already. However, that doesn’t mean we can’t express our admiration for it in our own way – this is a profoundly intimate, earnest film that draws on the viewer’s own emotional indices – our feelings towards our family, how we approach the sensation of alienation and loneliness, and our relationship with our own identities, all of which are fundamental themes that make up the basis for the film, and are the sources for many of Ozu’s most profound discussions. We form a deep and undying emotional connection to the story in some way, a personal relationship that comes about through the extent to which we can identify with these characters and their varying challenges. For some, Tokyo Story is just a wonderful piece of cinematic history, while for others it is the closest they have to representation on screen, perhaps not in terms of socio-cultural matters, but rather on the deeper psychological level. This, more than anything else, is exactly what makes proclaiming this film an absolute, towering masterpiece so easy – its intentions are clear, its story simple and emotions rich and evocative, making this not only a film, but a truly historic artistic achievement in every sense of the term.