This starts with a premise akin to that of Laurent Cantet's Time Out, in which a businessman made redundant continues a sham routine of going to work in shame at having to reveal his situation to his family. However the Japanese setting lends Tokyo Sonata an extra dimension, given the enormous stigma attached to unemployment in a culture accustomed to employment guaranteed for life, with redundancy therefore carrying the baggage that the jobless are at fault for their own circumstances.
Kurosawa's film is a sensitively nuanced mix of black comedy and social critique. The characters are perceptively drawn too, from the self-pityingly hypocritical father and atypically blunt mother to the idealistic older son. It does go OTT at the point of maximum catharsis, with all the principals temporarily losing their marbles, but thankfully recovers its bearings for a rather salutary and moving end.
7/10
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