How sharper than a serpent's tooth

Tôkyô monogatari (Tokyo story)

(1953)

A film from the year of my birth--which is to say 8 years after my father's generation bombed the everlovin' bejesus out two Japanese cities to bring the Emperor to his knees . . . yet it is a full 40 minutes until there is any hint that this is a nation that has been involved for generations in anything more contentious than a train queue. For that span, we have a rather boring Nipponese Ward and June Cleaver whose worst worry is that Beaver and Wallette are not quite as dutiful as a son and daughter might be wished in the best of all possible worlds (which this otherwise seems to be).

Then, finally, not quite a third of the way through, we discover that the young woman they're visiting on an evening when neither child has time for them is their widowed daughter-in-law, whose husband was drafted and died, yes, 8 years earlier.

And guess what? It turns out that the worst thing Ward and June (OK, actually Shukishi and Tomi Hirayama, subtly and sweetly played by Chishû Ryû and Chieko Higashiyama) have to worry about in a postwar world is . . . that 3 of their 4 children (not counting the dead one, about whom the reviews are mixed but mostly positive) are jerks to one degree or another.

On the other hand, their daughter at home (Kyôko Kagawa) and the daughter-in-law (Setsuko Hara) are Cordelia x 2, so kife, take it all around, it pretty OK.

Bittersweet quotidian, with only one real event of note, but it contains the whole lives of a loving couple, their family, and their troubled but resilient nation.