"Tokyo Monogatari" (1953) has purportedly been considered to be master auteur Yasujiro Ozu's own favorite, and by many others as his greatest. It takes a director with the caliber of Yoji Yamada ("Twilight samurai") to dare a remake. "Tokyo Monogatari" has been held so deep and dear in the hearts of many film lovers that a remake can almost be consider sacrilege. I confess to the fact that watching "Tokyo kazoku" (2013), I was asking myself "What's the point?" That is, until near to the end, when it suddenly clicked as I saw what Yamada is doing. Ozu is inimitable. "Tokyo Monogatari" is not remarkable. Yamada's work, however, is not so much a remake as an update.
The backdrops are markedly different. The post-war world in "Tokyo Monogatari" is gloomy and depressing. "Tokyo kazoku" is set in today's post-IT-revolution world, with cell phone and all. The modern-day mood is familiar to us, excitement but also alienation in a modern world-class city. People are in general less subtle and more expressive.
While not a shot-for-shot remake (say, as "Psycho") "Tokyo kazoku" generally follows "Tokyo Monogatari" very closely, particularly in the dialogue. However, there are some significant changes. One of the cleverest things I find is how Yamada uses the same dialogue and situation on the altered characters and scenarios. I'll come to that later.
Let me to quote from a film critic: Long before the term "generation gap" was coined Ozu probed it profoundly. The central theme in Ozu's mind is the relationship between parents and children. This is also very much the case of Yamada. The two couples, the eldest son and daughter and their respective spouses, are very similar to their original counterpart. In both, the doctor and his kindly wife are left intentionally underdeveloped, so as not to overcrowd the film. The daughter is as attention-grabbing as in the original, compelling a question whether she is being selfish or just practical. Her husband has been given a little more of a comic relief role. One change, somewhat insignificant, is replacing the youngest daughter (back in the village) with the neighbor's daughter.
The most significant change is on the two "single" young people. In the original, these two are the third son and the widow of the second son (who died during the war). In the remake, there is no third son, while the second son is not dead. This second son actually takes on the persona of the third son in the original – young and impatient. Obviously there is no longer a widow and the character is replaced by the second son's girlfriend, who has acquired the widow's name Noriko. With these changes comes the "something to offer" I cited in my summary line.
One change is the introduction of the "Boromir/Faramir complex" which to "The Lord of the Rings" devotees would be quite obvious. It's the situation in which the father lopsidedly favors the older son, and is forever critical of the younger. In this case, the favoritism seems almost justifiable as the older son is a medical doctor (albeit not particularly distinguished) while the younger is sort of a drifter. Still, it's also the same old generation gap - just more acutely brought out.
The biggest change, however, is in the woman. Old Noriko approaches being angelic, steadfastly maintaining her loyalty although her husband has been dead for 8 years. Her role in the film is pivotal. New Noriko has less of a role to play and yet it is a rather important role. In the final scenes, when they were on a ferry leaving the island, she is instrumental to a subtle reconciliation as she intimates to her boyfriend that his father wasn't really thinking badly of him after all. "He asked me to take care of you", she tells him. This is how it happened: the scene between the father and Noriko - how the same dialogue and situation is used for two very different scenarios. In the original, the father was thanking Noriko, repeating to her what the mother said about the time she spent with Noriko being the best time she had in Tokyo. He then gave Noriko the watch that the deceased mother left behind. This scene crystallized the almost saintly self-sacrifice of a widow of 8 years.
The scene is repeated almost exactly with the new Noriko, but in an entirely different scenario. Here, the young girlfriend, although nice and tolerant all along, is not above occasional grumbles to her boyfriend about the outwardly cold, aloof and taciturn father. This is the "updating" I mentioned earlier. In today's world, one as angelic as the old Noriko would be a little removed from reality. The new Noriko is in fact more "human", someone we can relate to. It's the same scene with almost the exact same details, with just one difference. The new Noriko, upon realizing that the old man is after all kind and considerate, protests that she is not really as good as he describes, and breaks into sobs. Both scenes, old an new, are the most touching in the film, but in different ways.
The old Noriko was played by legendary Setsuko Hara who will always remain one of the best loved actresses in Japan. The new Noriko is played by Yu Aoi, whose charm has been more than adequately demonstrated to those who have watched her in "Hana to Arisu' (2004) and "Flowers" (2010), just to name two of her many screen performances.