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Mostly known for his atmospheric horror films, the great Japanese filmmaker Kiyoshi Kurosawa re-imagines Yasujiro Ozu's dissolution of the Japanese family through his own unique vision with his extraordinary fifteenth feature Tokyo Sonata. The result is an equally terrifying and emotionally thought-provoking film of a family's collapse and tentative restructure. Kurosawa directs the film with a masterful visual sense of spacing and staging. Its dreamlike mood surrounds not only the viewer but the characters as well. Like Kurosawa's greatest films (Bright Future, Charisma) this is a challenging and unsettling atmospheric film. As in Bright Future, Kurosawa leaves a feeling of survival and hope moving forward to the unknown future. There is something both conventional and completely surreal about this film with the center-point being the family lack of communication. This is simply a masterful display of expressionistic filmmaking and pacing which is quite possibly Kurosawa's greatest achievement to date.
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