Tokyo-Ga (1985)

Tokyo-Ga, Wim Wender's documentary about Tokyo, features some stunning scenes. One of them takes place in a pinball parlor: glaring colors, rattling machies and faces hardened with concentration. In another scene, we follow the manufacturing of the wax food-imitations that are then paraded in restaurant windows. Most scenes are quiet, reduced to a registering camera, while other scenes are connected with the film's mission, told in voice-over by Wenders. He states his admiration for Ozu, the great director of, among other films, Tokyo monogatari. Wenders goes to Tokyo, full aware that Ozu's films are from another time. Japan underwent radical changes and Wenders finds very little that reminds him of the scenery from Ozu's movies. But sometimes he does. In an early scene, we see a little kid and a parent in the metro. The kid refuses to take another step. The parents drags the kid along. A great portion of the film comprises interviews with people who worked with Ozu; a cinematographer, and an elderly actor. It's a shame that these interviews are so short. A shortcoming of Wenders film is that it lacks focus. Why the hell would I be interested in watching a dull conversation with Herzog (in which he delivers a slew of platitudes about civilization) in the Tokyo tower? It's even a bit unclear what exactly it is that fills Wenders with such melancholia. His film attests to a type of romanticism, a longing for some kind of purity and more simple forms of life, that I find a bit too much on the escapist side.