Kurosawa called Ozu’s aesthetic “too rarified”. Tokyo Story, Ozu’s opus, really hammers home what Akira-sensei meant.

In only-just-postwar Japan a retired couple decide to visit their sararīmen children in Tokyo. The first act establishes the extreme social rigor, the crushing burden of politeness, that this action necessitates. It plays without non-formal dialog.

The second act begins with a misbehaving child — the eldest grandson is upset that his desk has been moved to make tatami room for the grandparents, disrupting his careful study schedule.

The wife of the oldest, most successful, son spends all of act two cleverly pawning the visiting relatives off on other branches of the family using guilt and gifts — the turning point of the act is her scheme to have everyone pool enough money to send the grandparents to a spa. It turns out to be one they don’t enjoy (I don’t know if that was intentional on the daughter-in-law’s part).

In the final act the grandparents come to terms with their disappointment in their children, deciding that they are “slightly above average”, and then die.

This film is pornography for people with OCD and Japanese horror for autistics. It’s the kind of film that is best reserved for a heavy late-night grass session so you can noodle along with the banal strangeness of its psychological cruelty.