The material for this documentary was shot (by the US cinematographer Ed Lachman) during Wim Wenders’ trip to Tokyo in 1983. It appears to have been an ‘off-the-cuff’ decision to travel, but Wenders has always been a committed admirer of Ozu Yasujiro and half the film is concerned with an essay about Ozu’s filmmaking practice and the rest with a form of analytical travelogue in which Wenders is looking for Ozu’s Tokyo some twenty years after the director’s death in December 1963. Wenders himself has said that the journey he took was “not a pilgrimage”, but it does in a way visit or find memories of Ozu, some direct (e.g. visiting his grave in Kamakura) and some indirect (e.g. the focus on a pachinko parlour, an important location in The Flavour of Green Tea Over Rice (Japan 1952)). The film’s subtitle is ‘A film diary’. The film is presented in Academy ratio (1.33:1) with music by Laurent Petitgand.
This dual narrative means that the documentary has an odd structure. It opens with Wenders’ voiceover which runs across the credits of Ozu’s best-known film in the west, Tokyo Story (Japan 1953). We then see the first few minutes of the film so that the whole pre-credits sequence is over 5 minutes. Similarly, at the end of the film we will see the closing sequence of Tokyo Story which will mark the end of Wenders’ documentary. Ironically these opening and closing sequences are set Onomichi, a small port town in Western Japan and not Tokyo. Wenders’ voiceover runs through much of the film. Much of the time, he’s telling us what he is thinking or explains what we are watching. But at other times we see people speaking in Japanese and rather than subtitle them, Wenders tells us, in English, what they are saying. I found this irritating, especially when, later in the narrative, Wenders meets Werner Herzog who speaks in German and is subtitled. The other oddity is that Wenders himself, whose English is very good, is subtitled. Turning off these subs means that if there are other instances, like the meeting with Herzog, they’d have to go on again. Finally, in terms of structure there is a relatively long sequence in which Wenders (and Lachman, presumably) travel through Tokyo during the day and the evening, observing shoppers, kids playing baseball, a golf range and young people ‘cosplaying’ as American teenagers from the late 1950s/early 1960s. In the middle of these observation sequences they travel to Kamakura by train to visit Ozu’s grave where Ryū Chishū, Ozu’s almost omnipresent actor, is tending the grave plot.
Interspersed with the nighttime Tokyo walk is a demonstration of the Ozu choice of a 50mm lens for all his shots. Wenders shoots the same alley shot with both a 40mm (or is it a 35mm?) lens and then with a 50mm lens and even a non-professional like me can see that the 50mm lens looks right for the shot. In the last part of the film Wenders interviews Atsuta Yuharu about his long collaboration with Ozu over a period of 20 years as cinematographer after an apprenticeship with ‘the master’ as camera assistant during the silent era. Atsuta is clearly still devoted to Ozu and he demonstrates the camera mount specially built for Ozu’s use. The interview, which becomes quite emotional, finally leads into the final sequence of Tokyo Story in which several of the compositions and framings often used by Ozu are illustrated.
The other encounter in the film with significance for cinephiles is the near appearance of Chris Marker in a café/bar named after perhaps his best-known film La Jetée (1962). Marker doesn’t want to be photographed and he hides behind a menu. He was in Tokyo for his film Sans Soleil (France 1983) which he describes as ‘my home video’. Categorised as an ‘essay film’ by many critics and scholars it includes several long sequences shot in Japan and especially in Tokyo. Marker’s film seems to be much more provocative in its approach to Japanese culture and its approach seems to express a deeper understanding of the culture than that of either Wenders or Herzog. (Herzog feels that in Tokyo as a city there is nowhere where he could find “pure and transparent images”, which seems extraordinary, but then his work led him towards much ‘wilder’ terrain for his later films.) I don’t mean to denigrate Wenders’ take on Ozu or his responses to the Japan he sees, but he does seem to feel that Ozu is now a long time in the past and that he never came to terms with the contemporary Japan that is on display in Tokyo-Ga. I’m not sure that is the case. By contrast, Wenders’ recent Japanese set film Perfect Days (Japan-Germany 2023) does seem to be more aware and coherent as a film. I enjoyed the later film very much. Tokyo-Ga is certainly interesting in what Wenders learns from Ryū and Atsuta and from his own observations. The film is now streaming on MUBI in the UK alongside Perfect Days. It’s also available to rent on Apple, Amazon, Curzon and other streamers. Watching the film now I have also been thinking of more recent films by Kore-eda and Hamaguchi in relation to Tokyo on screen.
In the trailer below from Wenders’ production company, promoting the digital restoration of the film, the focus is on the pachinko parlour. Wenders’ voiceover says they were introduced after the war. This isn’t strictly correct, they were in use before the war but were closed down during wartime. I’m not sure about the fine details of some of his analysis of Ozu’s films as well, but overall it’s very good.
itp Global Film 