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In a way, the affecting and unpredictable Tokyo Sonata is about the Japanese finally getting the memo.
A nation that reinvented itself as a world power through workaholism and the promise that employers would always reward their employees' sweat and sacrifice, is just now learning the awful truth -- that a corporation is not a family and that no job is safe.
And still that message is slow to sink in. A movie full of stark images, Tokyo Sonata's most compelling location is a concrete square where free food is doled out to the poor. Every second person lining up is dressed in a suit and carrying a briefcase, one even programming his cellphone to ring every few minutes -- all this to maintain the charade of gainful employment to their family and to themselves.
At the same time, this film by Kiyoshi Kurosawa resists falling into the trap of being simply a polemic against the worldwide economic race to the bottom. Though his family falls apart after the protagonist Ryuhei (Teruyuki Kagawa) is dismissed from his job as a factory director, Kurosawa is careful to trace the longstanding emotional fault-lines that are exacerbated by this family tragedy.
In a telling portent, Ryuhei's layoff is preceded by a presentation by Chinese officials to the factory owner, of the excellent Japanese spoken by their own executives, and a two-thirds cost slashing that would accompany the company's move to a Chinese province. It is like witnessing the Japanese selling a piece of their own soul.
Watching Ryuhei's post-employment story unfold, it's hard to tell whether the movie strains credulity or whether unemployment is such a new experience in that country that they really are utter naifs. At 46, Ryuhei goes to job interviews with no answer to the question "What skills do you have?" save for "interpersonal." At one interview, frustrated, he says he sings karaoke. The smug young exec makes him sing, and then dismisses him. One humiliation after another leads Ryuhei to a janitorial job at a mall.
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At home, Ryuhei's snappishness and deception becomes gasoline to be poured on different fires. His teenage son Takashi (Yu Koyanagi) is a wastrel who decides (against his father's wishes) to join the U.S. Army as a foreign enlistee and fight in Iraq. His young rebellious son Kenji (Inowaki Kai) fights a war at school against his own teacher, and seeks his own improbable escape in piano lessons (again, against his father's wishes).
Meanwhile, Ryuhei's wife Megumi (Kyoko Koizumi) begins to enter mad-housewife territory, unhappy with her marriage, her husband's deceptions and the emotional loss of her sons. While apparently careering toward a bleak ending (one seemingly presaged by the breakdown of one of Ryuhei's old classmates -- a cool practitioner of the art of pretending to be employed), Tokyo Sonata takes an utterly unexpected redemptive turn in its weird last act, complete with a deus ex machina botched crime (one of a handful of refreshingly comic turns in a movie that is also overwhelmingly depressing at times).
Kagawa does the heavy dramatic lifting in Tokyo Sonata, convincingly portraying a good man flailing against reality. But Koizumi is similarly effective, and the brooding child actor Kai is also top-notch -- key as his performance is to the ultimate redemption of all involved.
(This film is rated PG)