Becoming a parent is one of the most significant moments in one's life, which is at times overcast by this event being somewhat expected of you by society or your elders. Considering the development of our world, more than once people decide not to have children, as the responsibility is simply too great, and they simply cannot respond differently to the aforementioned dilemma. Director Hal Torii found himself facing the same question and made a short feature titled “Tokyo Story” about his thoughts on bringing a child into this world, essentially telling his own Tokyo Story.
Tokyo Story screened at Japanese Avant-Garde and Experimental Film Festival
As explained in the description to the feature, the two-minute-short tells the story of a mother giving birth, and how the relationship with her child evolves over time. While her baby is in need of her and searches for her in the streets of the Japanese capital, his quest for motherly love falls on deaf ears when he eventually finds his mother.
To be honest, the magnitude of ideas and themes contained in the two-minute-short is quite overwhelming and hard to follow. Researching the story becomes more or less essential given the onslaught of images, movements and sounds introduced by Torii, which by no means should indicate “Tokyo Story” is bad. While the story of mother and child unfolds, there are other aspects explored, for example, and perhaps most importantly, the concept of interconnection of places and people, as the urban landscape is closely linked to the parent and her baby. At the same time, the environment the child is born into seems quite hostile, emphasized by the sound design consisting of hectic traffic noises and trains, making the world the child is born into nightmarish.
While the number of themes and its overall structure can be quite much to take in, “Tokyo Story” nevertheless has a quite a lot to offer in terms of thoughts and also showcases the director's skill in audiovisual storytelling.
