When you are arguably the greatest director of all time (or at least occupy a firm position in the pantheon of masterful filmmakers with reputations that are beyond unimpeachable), you can afford to be criticized without it seeming like an attack against their legacy. Few filmmakers are more secure in being considered amongst the most important ever works in the medium of cinema than Yasujirō Ozu, who consistently proved himself to be an absolute master, and someone whose work was rarely (if ever) not worth watching. However, even someone of his stature has a few inferior efforts in their career, as is the case with Brothers and Sisters of the Toda Family (Japanese: 戸田家の兄妹), which is one of the rare instances where his work just does not resonate with quite as much intensity or poignancy as some of his other films. This doesn’t necessarily invalidate it as a worthwhile film, but it stands as one of his lesser efforts, a simple film that has many intriguing ideas, but not enough bandwidth to fully explore all of them, leading to a conceptually very good film, but one that falls slightly short as a result of the execution, which was appropriate for the material, but certainly nothing that demands immediate attention. Brothers and Sisters of the Toda Family has its charms, and it is certainly not a badly-made film by any means – it just doesn’t feel like the major achievements that were very soon definitive of the director’s work, being merely a charming family-based drama that saw Ozu exploring familiar themes, not adding much to the conversation, but still providing the nuanced and meaningful discussion we have grown to anticipate from his work, which is a perfectly understandable approach for an otherwise minor film.

As we’ve discussed numerous times before, Ozu was known for recurring themes throughout his films. Outside of a few later efforts that functioned as remakes or reimagings of his earlier films (such as Floating Weeds and Good Morning both containing significant elements of some of his silent-era works), every one of his films told a distinct and bespoke story, different from every other one he made. However, certain ideas co-exist between them and form the foundation for what makes these such cherished works. Family factors into every one of his films, which is hardly surprising considering how much of Japanese society has been built around the patriarchal structure of the nuclear family, from which conversations on social etiquette and gender dynamics are all derived. However, as much as he celebrates these tenets of social order, Ozu also actively subverts them, breaking these ideas down to offer his unique critiques, which are rarely all that provocative, but do look at these issues from a slightly different perspective. The catalyst for the events of Brothers and Sisters of the Toda Family is the death of the family’s patriarch, who dies suddenly from cardiac arrest, which plunges the family into existential despair as they try and maintain order while simultaneously trying to navigate their grief, which doesn’t only represent the loss of a parent, but a shift in the balance of power, with the family now falling into the hands of a son who is forced into a position that he only thought he’d encounter much later. What follows is a fascinating deconstruction of family values, as facilitated by a director whose interests resided deep within his understanding of the social system that surrounds families, as well as his deep dedication to telling stories that are meaningful and compelling, without becoming too overwrought or unnecessarily convoluted.

This approach to the material and the specific tempering of the tone is a primary component of the story and an aspect that drives this film and makes it such an informative account of family values at a time when they were at their peak, battling against the rise of modernity that would soon envelop traditions in only a matter of years – another aspect that Ozu’s later films managed to explore more thoroughly and with a lot more commitment to certain ideas. Brothers and Sisters of the Toda Family is more respectable than it is entertaining or informative, and while it is far from a failure, it just doesn’t inspire too much passion, especially amongst those who are accustomed to Ozu’s work, since we know how many of these themes are embedded in many of his other films, which explore concepts of family and mortality with more precision and earnest complexity. A lot of this can be understood when looking at this film from the perspective of when it was made – while he was already consolidated as a master, most of his previous work had been done in the silent era and was often much shorter and far more reliant on physicality more than storytelling, which is the inverse of many of his later films. Brothers and Sisters of the Toda Family is only the third sound film Ozu made, and as a result, you can see how he was still trying to develop his style within the confines of the sound era – he was not opposed to this technological breakthrough, but considering Japan only started to acquire the resources roughly a decade after other countries, there was a lot of work to be done to catch up with the United States and Europe, which had a considerable lead. There are clear elements brought from his previous work that were simply reconfigured here – the emphasis on movement more than dialogue, the framing of certain scenes and the dependency on the actors as expressive more than discursive performers were all remnants of the silent era, which Ozu was still working to assimilate more smoothly into these sound-based films, which was a much larger challenge than appeared on the surface.

It’s hardly a surprise that Brothers and Sisters of the Toda Family is not regularly cited as one of Ozu’s major works, because it doesn’t warrant such a status, especially not when it is essentially compressed between some of his greatest masterpieces in the form of The Only Son and There Was a Father (both of which are considered his earliest masterpieces)- but this does not invalidate it as a film, nor does it mean that it doesn’t contain many strong elements that help it along considerably. This is a very simple film, and there isn’t all that much to say about it – the performances are uniformly good (particularly from Mieko Takamine and Shin Saburi, who lead the film considerably well), the emotions are authentic and feel like they come from a place of genuine interest, rather than just existing for the sake of making us feel something, especially since the story is not necessarily the most compelling after a while. Brothers and Sisters of the Toda Family is a film that works best if we look at it as a transitionary piece, a film in which Ozu was experimenting with new technology, developing his style in a way that built on his previous work organically, which was vitally important in terms of maintaining its artistic vision. The story is conventional and the general atmosphere is exactly what we’d expect from the director, just at a much less impactful pace, which is not to disparage this film, but rather acknowledge that it is not his greatest work, but rather one that sees him attempting new methods of filmmaking, which work out well enough to keep us engaged, but still cause us to think back on the many other films that feature similar stories, and which approach these ideas with more consistency. Brothers and Sisters of the Toda Family is a decent film with many excellent ideas, and this is ultimately more than enough to warrant our time and attention, even if it isn’t particularly exciting as a whole.