Tokyo Story

This post was supposed to have been made yesterday. But i forgot. So here is my entry for Yasujiro Ozu's Tokyo Story.
Since the unit for this screening was International Cinema, I'd like to start off my entry with a comment on subtitles versus dubbing. I know that every person has their own preference because both have their pros and cons. My brother tells me he prefers watching foreign movies with dubbing because subtitles are a distraction and while you take the time to read the subtitles, you could have missed something very important on screen. I found this especially true while watching Tokyo Story. I would look down to write notes and I realized I'd miss a good 15-20 seconds of the film. Normally when watching a English movie if I'd look down to write notes and I would at least be able to listen to the rest of the dialouge. But this was not the case in Tokyo Story since I couldn't understand the language. However, having said this, I would much rather prefer watching a foreign movie with subtitles rather than it being dubbed. I don't watch that many foreign movies, but I do watch a lot of Japanese animation, and I've noticed how in a lot of the American dubbed versions the emotions seem to be toned down drastically. If you watch a foreign movie with the original voices, the audience may not be able to understand, but they should be able to understand at least the emotion the actor(ess) is expressing just by listening to their tone of voice.
As for the actual movie, I felt it was okay. Not really great, but not hiddeous either. I think the length of the movie made it seem less enjoyable and a lot of the scenes seemed dragged out longer than they could have been. Character-wise, I really really really disliked, I believe her name was Shige. From everything she said, to her actions and re actions, to even her facial expressions. Koichi (the doctor/son) I didn't like either. The director was probably aiming for this, but I felt that both of them were so mean to their parents. When the Mother was sick and Koichi pulled the Father and Shige aside, he talked about his own mother like she was just a regular nameless patient. This is probably a given, but I felt really really sad thinking about how the parents were treated. Their son's and daughters felt that they were an inconvience in their life and constantly tried to get rid of them. Something I just thought of was Why the Father used to drink. It was said that in the past he drank constantly until Kyoko was born. I'm wondering if perhaps he used to drink because he was unhappy. The first time we see him drink is when he is out with his old friends. Shige says to him when the police officer brings them back to their house something like, 'Why have you started drinking again.' Perhaps its because Shige and Koichi have made him feel so unwelcome that he wants to forget that hes become a burden to his family. The second noticable time we see the Father drink is after his wife dies. I imagine that he's extremely upset and sad at this time and wants to drink a bit to ease the pain. Shige almost stops him immediatly saying 'It's not good to drink'. Another scene that sticks out in my mind is the one between Noriko and the Mother. Even though she is not blood related she treats the Parents with the most respect. Noriko gives the Mother money out of heart. Unlike the others she doesn't spend money to get them out of the way, she gives them money so they can spend it on something they will want. There were a lot of other things that I wanted to comment about but most of them are little bits about how careless Shige and Koichi were, but since I'm sure the audience got the jist of that feeling, I'll comment on one last other thing. I thought it was really important to know that Kyoko and Noriko didn't bring mourning clothes with them to Onimichi. As far as I know people usually don't like thinking that someone they care for will die. Even if it is inevitable, it seems cold and rude and it's almost like they'd be giving up hope. The fact that Kyoko and Noriko didn't bring mourning clothes shows that they didn't even consider the fact that their Mother would die.