Age withers as well as ripens. Tokyo Story, almost always as the sole Japanese representative, save for the occasional Kurosawa, crops up on Western critics' lists of the best films ever made. Do not let this prejudice you.It's just a simple, well-crafted tale of an elderly couple making their final rounds around their children's preoccupied lives. They're met with irritable tolerance by all but for their widowed daughter-in-law, and their stoic acceptance of how things are when the progeny view their progenitors as just a burden must have struck a deep and shocking chord in a Japan just on the mend from the ravages of the war. That it manages to speak to audiences worldwide is very much down to the beautifully understated performances of the elderly duo, and, above all a prevailing sense that we're dealing with a universal emotional truth.
7/10
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