Movie Report on Tokyo Story by Yasujiro Ozu and Analysis of Mohsin Hamid's Novel The Reluctant Fundamentalist

Tokyo Story by Yasujiro Ozu

Tokyo Story was directed by Yasujiro Ozu and released in Japan in 1953. It is about an old married couple that travels to Tokyo to visit their children. They are greeted warmly, but are treated as if they are just an annoying sidetrack from the children's’ busy lives. The mother becomes ill and dies soon after they return home, leaving the family to reflect on her visit. Some striking scenes include the grandmother dreaming of her future during a walk with her grandson, the old couple’s visit to a spa, and three old men discussing the failure of the future generations.

The subject matter of the story consists of a social commentary on Japanese middle-class family life and more acutely, an examination of human mortality, alienation, and modernity. The main contention of Ozu’s unique style of directing is the importance of mutually supportive formal and stylistic systems, a contention that is absent from the classical Hollywood films of this period.

Whereas in most of the movies of this time the stylistic aspects would be subordinate to the narrative, the systemic of Ozu coexist independently of one another. This inimitable quality of Tokyo Story can be reflected on through the examination of continuity, transition, and the discretion of the non-diegetic filmic properties. The consideration of these elements suggests that a stylistically driven film can succeed regardless of the degree of narrative motivation.

The movie Tokyo Story is about family relations, how kids forget their loved ones specially parents and get occupy with their day to day life. Movie carries a story of an old married couple who plans to visit their kids, whom they haven’t paid a visit for a very long time. They realize that their lives are reaching the end, and wish to see what their children’s have done for themselves in their life. The couple travels to Tokyo a city in Japan, after their arrival in Tokyo, the parents are greeted warmly, but were treated ordinarily, and Kids are constantly busy with their work, present lives- appointments and have no time to spend with their old parents.

The old couple was sent on sight-seeing tours of Tokyo, especially to places unsuitable for elderly visitors. Parents were not given due respect by the kids, for example when the son bought cake, daughter in law didn’t allow them to eat it, as she felt it was too expensive for them to have it. Their other daughter in law who was widow was the only family member who accepted them analysis gracefully in her house and was nice to the couple. After they left for Tokyo, on the crowded train station, the mother becomes ill and minutes after getting home she dies. The story of the film consists of a social observation on Japanese middle-class family life and an analysis of human mentality and modernity.

The film didn’t focus on Japanese cultural, but overall it shows you how the younger generation view and treat their elders, especially parents. The film discusses that the children don’t like their parents once they are mature enough and they start earning money. Kids are developing American life by living independently from parents. In a daily life of ordinary people, Sense of deep affection wells up. Instead of a direct cut between scenes, director of the film Ozu often finds ‘intermediate spaces’. These are sometimes intermediate in a literal sense in that they fall between action just completed and the action to follow (transition). Such spaces are sometimes called still life’s and pillow shots. Pillow Shots helps to indicate a change of scene or location; it is not always clear where the new location is until a later shot in the scene reveals it.

Transitory spaces in the film do not help the viewers to get an idea on how much time has passed. In the film shots of smokestacks and building construction indicates that we are in Tokyo. The shot of power lines and a small railroad crossing is taken as representative of Tokyo, with its high energy and prominence in the postwar era. There is a motif of separation in the film for the couple there’s nothing more terrifying than the pain of parting. One of the regular motifs of Tokyo Story is that the family members do not frankly express their feelings, but rather hide them beneath a façade of compliance and cheerfulness. Towards the end, when the grandfather has stepped outside, even as all the relatives are assembled indoors, he comments, it is going to another hot day. All three children make a quick exit after the funeral only Noriko stays behind and keeps the lonely father company, as he greets a gorgeous sunrise--signaling a new day but still another hot one. This is how Shukichi reflects on his wife's death. The old man meant to say that life moves on we have to accept death as a natural cycle of life. The boats in the harbor still sail, the trains still run, and perhaps most importantly, the lives of the children continue. To accept this is to accept our own mortality.

What fascinates me about Ozu's idiosyncratic style is how he relies on insinuation to carry his story forward. In fact, some of the more critical events happen off-camera because Ozu's simple, penetrating observations of these characters' lives remain powerfully insightful without being contrived. Ozu scholar David Desser, who provides insightful commentary on the alternate audio track, explains this concept as 'narrative ellipses', Ozu's singularly effective means of providing emotional continuity to a story without providing all the predictable detail in between.

Ozu also positions his camera low throughout his film to replicate the perspective of someone sitting on a tatami mat. It adds significantly to the humanity he evokes. There are no melodramatic confrontations among the characters, no masochistic showboating, and the dialogue is deceptively casual, as even the most off-hand remark bears weight into the story. The film condemns no one and its sense of inevitability carries with it only certain resigned sadness. What amazes me most is how the ending is so cathartic because the characters feel so real to me, not because there are manipulative plot developments, even death, which force me to feel for them.

Finally, I felt this film is a great example of Ozu’s style as a director and as a reflection of 1950’s attitude of young generation especially, Japanese culture. Tokyo story deals with the different ways the two old people and the four young people deal with the various kinds of time. Some parts are extremely emotional and can suggest ideas on more than one level of thought. The story is purposely simple in understating the necessity of the formal system and the need to guide the direction of the film. The deeper meanings and observations arise, throughout the evolution, the transition, and the non-diegetic portions of Tokyo Story.

The Reluctant Fundamentalist

“Time only moves in one direction. Remember that. Things always change” (Hamid 96). In the book The Reluctant Fundamentalist, Mohsin Hamid portrays a young international student from Pakistan named Changez. Changez comes to the United States to fulfill the American dream, but America is about to let Changez down. He starts with every immigrant’s interpretation of the American dream: get rich and be able to provide for their family. Later, he changes his perspective briefly to America being a possible escape from Pakistan, and lastly shifts his perspective of the American dream to the pursuit of love. The American dream fails for Changez: he loses his job, gets deported back to Pakistan, and the woman he loves meets a tragic end.

The Reluctant Fundamentalist is a fiction novel, exploring the growing chasm between the East and the West. Mohsin Hamid has used a unique narrative mode- the dramatic monologue –and used it skillfully to weave an account of a young Pakistani’s class aspirations and inner struggle in corporate America. The story takes place within the span of a day, as Changez approaches an American in the district of Old Anarkali in Lahore, Pakistan. He invites the American to have tea with him, which eventually leads into dinner and continues on into the late evening while he recounts the events of his life which has led up to their fated encounter. The story is told in the second-person narrative, meaning the voice of the American is never heard, but his reactions are implied and guided by Changez.

Throughout The Reluctant Fundamentalist, beginning on the first page, Hamid, the author, shows how people judge one another based on their clothing, their skin color, and their mannerisms. These forms of racism shape Changez and his impressions of the United States. Although Changez’s friends at Princeton treat him respectfully, they’re aware that he is an outsider in the United States. When they travel to Greece together, Changez experiences various forms of “soft” racism. While not rude or disrespectful to him, his friends think of him as an exotic “pet”; even Erica is attracted to Changez because he is “different.”

Chagnez is alone and lonely in America. He is from Pakistan and that is why it is pretty hard for him to find friends and socialize. As a rule, the representatives of his homeland are not treated well. So, he has to prove that he is just like everyone else, that he has exactly the same rights and he also can make his American Dream come true by himself, without any help. And he does that, after studying hard, he gets a good job and his employer is satisfied with him. But still there is something missing. America is not his country, he doesn’t feel comfortable there, he even hates it, as the reader may conclude from the fact that the events of the 9/11 attacks make him smile: 'Yes, despicable as it may sound, my initial reaction was to be remarkably pleased.' Later, he leaves America and becomes a leader of anti-American movements in Lahore and finally he finds himself in the right time and place, doing what he likes and what he has to.

Mohsin Hamid has successfully captured the dominant political discourses of the contemporary world and presented them as mutually exclusive. What makes this book work is the masterful employment of irony and controlled suspense to create a subtle polemic. As one mentioned in the book reviews that ‘Hamid has remained true to a writer’s purpose: To tell a story. And to tell it well. Hamid shows that disrespect and lack of acceptance by American culture of the people from other cultures is the biggest barrier in the way of natural and mutually beneficial interaction among various cultures and countries.

The discriminatory and insulting attitude of America and its culture makes people reactionary and extremist like was the case with Changez who in spite of his education from Princeton, his love for a white American girl, his job and status in America becomes the fundamentalist. Changez rejects all these benefits along with American culture and comes back to the culture of his origin, discards his hybrid identity and invents his new identity which is shaped by extremist ideology. Similarly, Hamid has portrayed that American interference and intervention in the internal affairs of other countries is neither in the interest of America nor in the interest of international peace and cooperation, because it breeds ill will and encourages people from developing cultures like Pakistan to embrace extremist ideologies.

On the 11th September 2001, while Changez is on a work assignment in Manila, the World Trade Centre in Manhattan is attacked. Before this, Changez had begun to become more discerning and repulsed by America and the stereotypes and consumerism it appeared to value. Due to these feelings, Changez had become resentful of the place which had previously been the makings of his dreams, and relished America being ‘brought to its knees’ by the events of 9/11. While returning from Manila, Changez begins to notice drastic differences in life in America, beginning with his being strip-searched in the airport and treated as foreigner, despite having lived there for years. This event marks the turning point in the novel, wherein Changez begins to feel uncomfortable in America and begins to revolt against his company and its values of capitalism and consumerism.

Changez, facing a severe identity crisis, returns to Pakistan, where tensions with India have reached unprecedented levels. When confronted with the shabby reality of his hometown, he feels like a traitor- actively working for a country that is engaged in war with an ally of his own country. He grows a beard as a sign of visible protest. Once back in America, he is frequently subjected to racial abuse- his tyres are slashed, he is called names on the subway. His performance at work too falls as his growing preoccupation with the events of the subcontinent allow him time for little else.

After being fired from his job, Changez is forced to leave America and returns to his home in Lahore, where he meets the anonymous American. As the evening draws to a close, Changez offers to walk ‘you’ back to ‘your’ hotel. Along the way he explains that he is now a university lecturer at a local university in Lahore, and has become a mentor to his more politically minded students, some of whom have been implicated in recent political riots and violence. It becomes apparent along the walk that the two men have been followed by a group of men from the café, and Changez appears to be involved in a plot with them. The novel ends ambiguously, with the American reaching for something in his jacket, perhaps a business card, as Changez suggests or perhaps a gun with which to kill Changez. It is up to the reader then to decide which it is.