Blog 2

Compare and contrast how Tokyo Story and a classical Hollywood continuity film create two different forms of realism.

Unlike a classical Hollywood continuity film, the events that occur on screen in Tokyo Story do little to advance the overall narrative but rather, provoke the viewer to think about the characters and their relationships. This is accomplished by Ozu by simply letting the characters be observed as they move about and converse in non-contrived, familiar situations. Furthermore, seemingly trivial events within Tokyo Story's narrative are extended in terms of time and stylized in a variety of ways to achieve a particular emotional effect, one that is noticeably melancholy and ambivalent.
In a classical Hollywood continuity film the narrative is predominantly filled with individual dramatic events and moments of expository dialogue that propel the plot forward in a pattern of cause-and-effect leading up to an anticipated conclusion. In Tokyo Story, however, the director's focus is not so much to tell a compelling story as it is to linger on the details of the characters' interactions and the nuances of the various places that they inhabit. In this way, Ozu's film is much more poetic than a classical Hollywood continuity film.