This grayness permeating through the cracks and crevices of political frustration creates a thoughtful mediation on the personal and pubic effects of social upheaval in director Olivier Assayas’ latest film Something In The Air.

The story opens on a 1971 demonstration at the Place de Clichy in Paris by Le Secours Rouge, an organization stemming from the Maoist communist movement demanding political status for some of its imprisoned party leaders.

One of the young students involved is Gilles (played by Clement Metayer). Although an aspiring artist, Gilles is caught up in the political fever of the time, and along with his friends Alain (played by Felix Armand) and Christine (played by Lola Creton), begin participating in a series of demonstrations and protests throughout the city.

Soon, the nature of the demonstrations begins to escalate, moving from distributing flyers and simple graffiti, to trespassing and arson, eventually leading to a security guard being hospitalized.

With authorities rounding up members of the party, the three take off for summer holiday in Italy, where they watch their political ideals changing, and instead begin to embrace the passions that will propel them out of adolescence.

Assayas has been fascinated with the French underground community of the 1970’s ever since his 1994 film Cold Water, and had been interested in expounding on those initial explorations. He says, “I had a feeling that I had, in a moment of haste, caught a sense of the poetry of those days, of my teenage years-the early 1970’s. And then that also gave birth to a sense that this could well be the setting of a bigger film about this unknown and fascinating period.”

Revolution is everywhere in the film, in both a political sense and a deeper maturation of the self, from motorcycle riot control forces beating demonstrators down with batons, to the main characters experiencing growth and awareness through loss, it’s all a sort of blossoming out of the burnt embers of destruction and heartbreak. Assayas goes on to say, “In the 1970’s we were against the very thought of government. No one wanted to be included, the plan of action was to be among the excluded.”

Allowing the spirit of the time to wash across the screen in such vividness is Eric Gautier’s cinematography. Gautier, who previously worked with Assayas on Summer Hours and who’s credits also include On The Road, Miral and Into The Wild, uses light and shadow as the ultimate tool of concealment, transporting characters through confining corridors of darkness and guiding them to a surface of radiant light, their bodies and thoughts floating in warm swirling pools of wonder, fear and curiosity.

Perhaps more than revolution though, the film most exudes the elements of anarchy. Our characters seem to relish in the idea of complete freedom and absence. On the surface, we mainly see the attraction to the physical absences of authority and order, but the characters are also searching for the more abstract and undefinable properties of existence that will fill the uncomfortable voids lingering largely in their minds and flesh, replacing them with a pulse jolting them out of uncertainty, and allowing their true passions to guide them into stability.

Anarchy often appears as a potent catalyst in the generation of art, and here is no different as we watch Gilles’ illustrations move from the realism of nudes to the abstraction of drip painting, his moist lines of color drawing holes in his canvas, allowing figures to metamorphosize  into the blurred desires of his future.

The motif of fire is quite prominent in the film, a destructive and life-giving force illustrating the strong consumptive power of youth. Assayas says, “There is something precious about the naivety, the candor, the idealistic outlook on the world we have when we seek to be a part of it, to find our place and to confront it as well, without reflecting on the consequences.”

It is this youthful excitement that often allows the film to burn brightly.

With the participation of 5 interviewees including a veteran ABC news correspondent, a professor of history and a playwright, Ascher carefully dissects every component of the narrative, offering numerous speculations as to the thematic bonds holding the story together including commentary on Native Americans, genocide, numerology, fairy tales, NASA Conspiracies and World War II.

Ascher had been transfixed by the film ever since sneaking into a screening of it as a kid, and finally in January 2011 began reaching out to fellow professionals and fans, hoping to shed light on a work that has both baffled and inspired a generation of people in equal measure. Ascher says, “As interesting as it might have been to talk about the genesis of the film with some of Kubrick’s collaborators, our feeling from the beginning was to restrict ourselves to the reactions of the audience and the way they put the pieces together.”

One of the more compelling theories comes from artist John Fell Ryan, who runs a theater for experimental cinema in San Francisco. After reading a blog post that suggested The Shining is a film meant to be viewed forwards and backwards, Ryan staged a screening of the film running this way simultaneously, and the result is quite startling.

The film itself becomes a specter, gliding, ghost-like images dissolving in and out of each other, figures melting through rooms and the blood-soaked bodies of the infamous slain twin girls staining the eyes and cheeks of Jack Torrance as he speaks to Delbert Grady in the bathroom of the gold room. Every sequence appears to be a perfect thematic representation of the other, an exercise in cinematic origami where every fold and layer transforms the work into something more intricate and exciting.

There’s also the theory by Professor of History at Albion College Geoffrey Cocks, who believes the film is an allegory to the Jewish Holocaust during World War II. Cocks points out the reoccurrence of the number 42 throughout the film, which was the year the Third Reich began the genocide on the Jewish population; even the numbers of room 237 when multiplied together equal 42.

This was a subject certainly of interest to Kubrick. In 1976, he began adapting Louis Begley’s novel Wartime Lies, retitling it The Aryan Papers about a boy and his aunt hiding out from the Nazi regime during the Holocaust. Eventually abandoning the project after the release of Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List, it has also been said by those close to Kubrick that the depressive nature of the subject matter eventually became too overwhelming for him, and that in his view, trying to make an accurate representation of the Holocaust through cinema was nearly impossible.

When The Shining was first released, Toronto’s The Globe and Mail said of it, “Kubrick certainly doesn’t fail small. One could fast forget The Shining as an overreaching, multi-leveled botch were it not for Jack Nicholson.”

As Ascher displays impressively though, the film is by no means a forgettable botch, and instead stands as one of the great puzzles of modern art, an endless mystery that will continue to divide viewers for years to come.

Room 237 is now playing at the Sundance Sunset in West Hollywood, Laemmle’s Playhouse 7 in Pasadena and South Coast Village in Costa Mesa.

The ability for life to be both washed away and renewed through death is a harrowing process examined in Pablo Berger’s Blancanieves.

A retelling of the classic tale “Snow White,” the film takes place in 1920’s Spain and follows Carmen (played by Macarena Garcia). The daughter of a famous bullfighter but who lost her mother during childbirth, Carmen is sent to live with her tyrannical stepmother Encarna (played by Maribel Verdu). After years of torment, Carmen escapes and joins a traveling troupe of bullfighting dwarves, where her status and ability as a bullfighter grows.

But upon agreeing to a match at the arena in Seville, Carmen finds the dangers of her past have resurfaced, determined this time to end her optimism and happiness for good.

Using the structure and visual design of silent era cinema, Berger provides an environment where image takes precedence over language and even says, “The viewer must feel rather than think, and be led by a story told only through images and music. Film as ceremony and cathartic experience.”

To achieve this, Berger reteamed with renown Spanish cinematographer Kiko de la Rica (their previous collaboration Torremolinos 73 was nominated for 4 Goya awards.)

Much like his sensual and dazzling compositions in Sex and Lucia, de la Rica allows sunlight and shadow to be prominent and influential characters in the film, battling over barren desert landscapes, the dungeon like confines of a decrepit chicken coup and the snarls and smiles of wrinkled flesh, blending the indifference of nature with the passions of desperate people into a whirlwind held together by the essence of living.

Because of the silent format, Alfonso de Vilallonga’s score becomes the dialog. It is the language of soaring strings and vibrant guitar, mixed with the laughter and shouts of clapping; nervousness, desire and attraction held tightly in the conversation of sun-parched, restless hands.

Berg certainly maintains the darker aspects of the Grimm Brothers’ original tale, but also infuses a refreshingly playful and whimsical component. Despite the constant hardship Carmen has had to endure, her imagination leads her out of the most forsaken situations, and propels her into the infinite romance and curiosity with the world around her.

She dwells in an almost perpetual childhood. This is by no means an indication of immaturity, but rather a vivid illustration of the sense of wonderment she possesses, and how her contagious ability to embrace the unexpected is a source of unending inspiration for the people who come into her life.

As Hemingway reflected further on bullfighting, he would go on to say, “It is an art that deals with death and death wipes it out. But it is never truly lost, you say, because in all arts all improvements and discoveries that are logical are carried on by someone else; so nothing is lost.”

In Blancanieves, death is a binding and renewable force, allowing some things to wither and crumble, carried in the breeze and pant legs of passersby, that ultimately rise to a new form; a form with excitement, imagination and a life-giving breath.

Blancanieves is now playing in New York and select theaters across the country including the Sundance Sunset in West Hollywood and Laemmle’s Royal in West Los Angeles.

The unfortunate events of this 2005 incident at a monastery in Tanacu Romania, and documented by a local television station, provided much of the foundation for director Cristian Mungiu’s latest film Beyond The Hills. Set in an isolated Orthodox convent in Romania, the story follows Alina (played by Cristina Flutur) and Voichita (played by Cosmina Stratan) who have known each other since their days growing up in an orphanage. Having spent several years living abroad in Germany, Alina wants Voichita to return with her to Germany, but Voichita has recently found comfort and security in the role of a nun and refuses. Attempting to win back Voichita’s affection, Alina challenges a priest and is sent to a hospital after acting out violently towards the members of the monastery. Upon returning, Alina is included in the monastic routine, but her condition quickly worsens, with the priest and nuns suspecting that she might be possessed. Soon, the debate of performing an exorcism emerges, which will test the limits of love and religious devotion for everyone involved.

Inspired by the non-fiction novels and reporting of BBC correspondent Tatiana Niculescu Bran, the narrative allows Mungiu to explore the dynamic of love and free will and how love, in all its incarnations, can transform the concepts of good and evil into blurred perspectives of uncertainty. Mungiu says, “Most of the greatest mistakes of this world have been made in the name of faith, and with the absolute conviction they were done for a good cause.”

By setting the story around two characters who have shared both a familial and sexual bond, and having those personas controlled and interpreted by novice film actors (this is the first feature for both Stratan and Flutur), what you get in turn are the complex and passionate emotions of human beings reaching towards personal and societal maturity, and the fears and frustrations of trying to adapt and survive in an environment that is foreign and at times illogical.

With the assistance of Oleg Mutu’s cinematography (who worked with Mungiu on his previous film 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days) and production design by Calin Papura and Mihaela Poenaru (the two had the job of building the entire monastery set in often minus 15 degree weather), the setting itself becomes this engaging mesh of beauty and melancholy, and like the paintings of Romanian artist Nicolae Grigorescu, allows for an alternating effect of vibrancy and dark mystery exploring the cavernous complexities of a land battling to hold onto its traditions while trying to progress into the future.

Mungiu says, “The film speaks about a region of the world-like many others-where longtime exposure to an endless succession of misfortunes and atrocities of all kinds has led to a breed of inert people who have lost their normal reactions in front of normal stimuli.”

Every component contained within the scenes has a purpose, no matter how small or seemingly insignificant. Through this carefully constructed subtlety, the environment itself appears as this organic, maze-like extension of the characters leading them towards a much desired escape.

This though can bring on unexpected consequences, and as Mungiu shows quite impressively, an individual’s escape from one corridor may lead to a far more harrowing and disastrous trap.

Beyond the Hills opens in NY and LA on March 8th, with a national rollout to follow.

The story follows a young woman named Akiko (played by Rin Takanashi). Having moved to Tokyo from her rural home, Akiko has been working as an escort while taking classes at a local university. After missing an opportunity to see her visiting grandmother one evening, Akiko is assigned to spend the night with a renowned sociology professor named Takashi (played by Tadashi Okuno). Developing a relationship more akin to grandfather and granddaughter, the two’s time together is unexpectedly interrupted by the pursuits of Akiko’s domineering boyfriend Noriaki (played by Ryo Kase). Soon, elements of jealousy and passion enter the scene, creating a hostility that sends the characters spiraling into dark and unexpected territory.

The intricacies of relationships both romantic and familial weave together a mosaic of longing and heartbreak that transforms the characters into rich living embodiments of the emotions they are simultaneously trying to express and suppress; the most significant of these being love. Kiarostami dissects love, and its infinite complexities, with careful and precise detail, allowing it to transcend simple and expected definitions which in turn give it a more mysterious and abstract quality, enabling powerfully visceral sensations to surface.

The dynamic between Akiko, Takashi and Noriaki seems like a case study pulled from the pages of The Anatomy Of Dependence, the seminal work by psychoanalyst Takeo Doi about the concept of amae, a quality of behavior in Japanese society that suggests an individual will act out, often in a childish manner, in an attempt to coax an authority figure into indulging or taking care of them. This type of self-expression manifests itself in a variety of intriguing and compelling ways throughout the narrative, from Akiko lying in Takashi’s bed refusing to move to Noriaki breaking a window in a jealous rage, the primal qualities of need and desire disregard social conventions and expectations in favor of the raw components of survival.

A motif that surfaces quite frequently in the film is the idea of reflections. Through Katsumi Yanagijima’s photography, cityscapes, auto body shops, bedrooms and restaurants wash and mesh together in a flowing current of passion and longing, where time and age cease to exist leaving blurred splashes of reality to enhance the desires of the characters.

As with his previous film Certified Copy, Kiarostami began the production of Like Someone In Love with draft versions in which he shot with just the location sets, then with stand-ins before real filming began with the actors. This process adds a significant richness to his work with Kiarostami acting as the architect and laying the foundation of the project, but allowing the gradual incorporation of talent and elements to build upon one another, ultimately completing a living force that is at times unexpected, but always exciting and authentic to the unpredictable nature of life itself. Producer Marin Karmitz, who has worked with Kiarostami since 1999’s The Wind Will Carry Us, said of his relationship with the director that, “Abbas Kiarostami lets his ideas blossom like flowers, and whereas some wither away, others flourish.”

With Like Someone In Love, this assessment has never been truer, and allows the viewer to be swept up in both frustrating moments of uncertainty and the blissful beautiful emotions that are the driving forces within us all.

Like Someone In Love is now showing in New York and L.A.

Based on Thomas Hardy’s novel Tess D’Urbervilles, the film follows Trishna played by Freida Pinto (Slumdog Millionaire), who lives with her family in a village in Rajasthan, India’s largest state. After the unexpected injury of her father, Trishna takes a job working at a nearby resort to help pay the bills. It is there that she meets Jay played by Riz Ahmed (Four Lions) the wealthy son of a property developer. When Jay takes up managing a resort at his father’s request, he meets Trishna at a dance, and soon tries to win her affection at every opportunity. The two quickly become a couple, with Trishna introduced to a world much different than her rural upbringing. But when the two move to Mumbai, the couple’s curiosity and confusion regarding ancient privilege and modern equality plunges both of them into a warped journey of sexual exploration and degradation.

Trishna marks Winterbottom’s third adaptation of a Hardy novel (The Claim and Jude being his previous), and with it, the director takes every opportunity to examine a nation where the rapid agricultural and industrial progression has created a sort of neocolonialism, where the rise in aspects such as international tourism has taken young, rural educated men and women and placed them in positions of waiting on wealthy westerners hand and foot.

Pinto fully immerses herself into the complexities of the Trishna character, embodying not only an individual on the brink of change, but an entire culture as well. Moving from the sand swept huts of Jodhpur to the heat-drenched bedrooms of Mumbai, we watch Trishna float like a loose piece of frail paper, ascending from the desert dunes caught in a current of conflicting emotions and traditions. What starts as a whirlwind romance and sexual awakening between her and Jay, eventually diminishes into a form of slavery, her young, vibrant being unraveled, becoming instead a wrinkled, two dimensional faded illustration mirroring a copy of the Kama Sutra Jay keeps near their bedside at all times.

Trishna’s thoughts and tears seem to melt and influence the environment around her, and Winterbottom has done an effective job in bringing on collaborators to sustain and enhance this feeling. Cinematographer Marcel Zyskind who has worked with the director before on The Killer Inside Me and A Mighty Heart, captures every flashing streetlight and shadowed corridor with precision and grace, while the lush score by Shigeru Umebayashi (Best known for Yumeji’s Theme in Wong Kar Wai’s In The Mood For Love) peels back the dry, often crowded city streets, and magnifies the desirous whispers of Trishna’s mind into a swirling breeze illuminating a troubled and yearning soul.

More than one woman’s personal journey, Trishna acts as an elevated manifestation, a collective collage of the empty hands and hungry hearts of a group of people deciphering the puzzles of the present, and moving ahead towards an uncertain yet promising future.

Photoreceptor cells known as cones allow for this color-vision, and the greater amount of cones an organism possesses the more variants of color it can process.

Humans have three, butterflies five and tropical Mantis Shrimp quite astonishingly have 16.

Known as sea locusts by ancient Assyrians, Mantis Shrimp sport hyperspectoral vision, able to see both ultraviolet light and many shades of color we cannot even imagine.

They also have the luxury of possessing some of the most powerful claws of any crustacean, and have been known to break through aquarium glass with a single blow from them.

It is this idea of aggression in unforeseen realms that dominate director Panos Cosmatos’ debut Beyond The Black Rainbow, a compelling and enigmatic journey into the surreal and often unexplainable emotions of the human condition.

The film opens in the year 1983, and centers around a facility known as the Arboria Institute, founded by Dr. Mercurio Arboria whose primary objective is to research and obtain the hidden workings of inner peace by means of experimental horticulture and sensory therapy.

Despite the institute’s initial efforts in constructing a gateway towards a more fulfilling and utopian society, the unexpected side effects of failed experiments soon seep their way into the mind of Arboria’s colleague Dr. Barry Nyle, who transforms the labyrinthine hallways and corridors of the complex into his own private laboratory, focusing his energy on the mysterious patient Elena, who desperately seeks answers to her past while trying to escape the sinister motivations of Dr. Nyle.

Soon, all three characters will be plunged into a maelstrom of fear and discovery, gasping for breath as the shifting shadows of menace invade every inch of their being.

The film, like the objectives of the characters, is a study in the extreme stimulation of the senses, and what insight and revelations can be obtained from it.

First time helmer Cosmatos peels back every layer of reality, leaving skeletal abstractions that fill each darkened corner with a heightened and often intriguing state of being; from Sinoia Caves’ epic analog synthesizer score to Norm Li’s hypnotic camerawork, the viewer is no longer just a spectator but has been formally admitted to this harrowing sanatorium, where ideas of time, language and life wash away in a current of expanded consciousness.

Because of the emphasis on the hallucionary visual components of the piece, it’s easy to dismiss it as an exercise in extreme style, lacking any meaningful narrative or thematic elements. This however seems a far too simplistic view, and does not take into consideration the care with which Cosmatos has crafted many of the characters, especially Barry Nyle.

Nyle, played by Canadian actor Michael Rogers who has had supporting roles in films such as The Assassination Of Jesse James and Two For The Money, is a sort of mobile mirror, a distorted reflection of the false hopes and growing evils that now infect his mind and heart.

His character is not simply a troubled man, but an evolving manifestation of pivotal 20^th century societal change, leaving the warm idealism of the late 1960’s and moving into the uncertainty and fear of the Cold War era.

Growing up in the 70’s, this transitional period would have been something Cosmatos would have experienced firsthand, and he uses both the optimism and pessimism of the time to illuminate an experience that transcends words and comprehensible actions, and instead transforms into a visceral free floating bit of raw human emotion.

It is an experience that will not soon be forgotten.

Each volume in this set is centered around a main, featured short and accompanied by a handful of other classics that will often reflect the time period of the featured title.

The stand out of Volume 4 is one of Disney’s all-time classic shorts The Tortoise and the Hare. This of course being one of the most recognized fables in classic literature, the story gains a vibrancy in this Disney edition through its humor and eccentric portrayals of the main characters. The volume also contains a lesser known gem The Goddess Of Spring. Personifying the changing of the seasons, Spring here is depicted as a beautiful, young woman, who is snatched away and forced to remain half of the year in the fiery underworld of hell, thus bringing about winter. There are certainly dark and almost frightening moments in the short, but the music and colors contained within the scenery and characters strongly reinforce the idea of Spring melting away the coldness of Winter.

With Volume 5 comes one of the most famous and beloved shorts in Disney’s cannon Wind in the Willows. Narrated by perhaps the most famous Sherlock Holmes of all-time Basil Rathbone, the story follows J. Thaddeus Toad and his friends Rat, Mole, and Angus MacBadger as they try to reclaim the deed to Toad’s house that was stolen by a gang of weasels. The story humorously examines the bonds of friendship and the consequences of becoming obsessed over material possessions. The short gets its due with this remastered edition, allowing the richness of the colors to leap off the screen.

Highlighting volume 6 is The Reluctant Dragon, which follows a young boy enthralled by tales of knights in shining armor and fire breathing dragons who happens to come across both a knight and dragon that would rather drink tea and recite poetry than fight one another. The story illuminates the idea of myth, and takes an entertaining approach at bringing forth the reality and causes for many of these myths.

These volumes cover a large spectrum of literary lore from the American tall tale with such shorts as Johnny Appleseed and Paul Bunyan, to fairytales like Babes In The Woods and The Ugly Duckling to morality plays like The Wise Little Hen, many of these stories remain universal in their themes, and through Disney’s rich character portrayals bring forth a freshness that is just as entertaining as when they were first released.

The timelessness of these stories is evident, and with Disney’s dedication in the preservation and restoration of these titles, a new generation can experience the beauty, humor and enlightenment of these beloved classics.

This resignation to a way of life and its eventual questioning are central to director Eran Riklis’ latest film Lemon Tree.

The film follows a woman named Salma, a Palestinian widow who lives on the green line border between Israel and the West Bank. When the Israeli Defense Minister moves into the neighboring house opposite of Salma’s lemon grove, Salma discovers that the minister’s secret service has decided that her lemon trees pose a threat to the Minister’s safety and issues them to be cut down. Together with Ziad Daud, her young Palestinian lawyer, Salma goes all the way to the Israeli Supreme Court to try and save her trees. Her fight gains the attention of Mira Navon, the Defense Minister’s wife, who is trapped in her new home and an unhappy life. Despite the differences between them, the women develop a bond, which contributes to an awakening in both of them. Salma’s legal and personal journey lead her deep into the complex and often chaotic struggle taking place in the Middle East.

One of the strongest aspects of the piece are the performances by the actors. Hiam Abbass in her role as Salma, speaks volumes without uttering a word, allowing her face, lips and the almost hypnotic stare of her eyes to entrance and propel every scene forward she is in.

What Salma and Mira Navon share is a sense of loneliness within their separate lives. Riklis says, “This is really a film about solitude as it is reflected in the lives of two women- Salma on the Palestinian side and Mira, the defense Minister’s wife, on the Israeli one, and I guess that is what really drew me to it as well as all the other characters involved who somehow represent so many issues and subjects but all of them suffer from a kind of loneliness which is part of their lives on a personal and national level.”

The photography as well communicates the ideas of solitude and longing, and through Rainer Klausmann’s elegant and often captivating use of light and color, Salma’s grove is brought to life, showing it’s initial vibrancy all the way through its dying branches from a lack of water, creating both a beautiful and heartbreaking image of the characters themselves.

With all of the focus on this much disputed area, one must wonder whether this is a political film? Riklis explains, “I don’t believe in the term and find it outdated. Everything is political in this day and age and whatever you say, do or think has some kind of political impact or feedback. Decisions taken by distant policy makers have an immediate effect on people everywhere, in particular when you live in a ‘danger zone’ like the middle East, but also if you live in New York, Paris or Berlin for that matter. So Lemon Tree is not political, it is about people trapped in a political deadlock. The Defense Minister, his wife, Salma, her lawyer-they are all trapped within their own life, within their own personal and public situation and frame of mind.”

With strong performances, gorgeous photography and a moving story, Lemon Tree relates not only to the struggle taking place in the Middle East, but provides an examination of the common likes and desires of people everywhere.

It is the truths that lie below the surface of this elite class that reveal the most troubled vices and desires of human nature, and in director Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s latest film Tokyo Sonata, the filmmaker probes deep in discovering these darkened aspects plaguing the social and economic growth of contemporary society.

Set in modern day Japan, the film centers around the Sasaki family living in a fairly prosperous, upper middle class suburb. When the father Ryuhei loses his job, the gradual unraveling of the family begins. Too ashamed to reveal his unemployment, Ryuhei pretends nothing has happened, and instead of informing his family of the situation, spends his days wandering about various libraries and parks to kill time until returning to his home in the evening. His wife Megumi meanwhile has become incredibly dissatisfied with her position at home, and longs to escape the monotony of housework and other domestic activities. Their sons Kenji and Takashi as well search for their purpose and meaning; Takashi joins the American military and Kenji begins secretly taking the piano lessons his father has forbid.

Ultimately the characters must confront their own personal weaknesses, and discover the strengths lying within the bonds of family.

Director Kurosawa, known for his horror films such as Cure, departs from his previous work for an intimate examination of social and economic strife that is both saddening and hopeful.

“I am hoping that Tokyo Sonata will be received by the audience as a film unlike any of my previous works,” Kurosawa says. “The theme I am most concerned with right now is what kind of generation the 21st century truly is. Why is it so muddled and confused? Why is it so vastly different from the vision of the future we had in the previous century? Who is responsible for the way things turned out? It is difficult to find the answer. Tokyo Sonata was created so that I would not back down in the face of this complex problem, and I expect it to become a new point of departure for me.”

With great technical precision, Kurosawa is able to bring the audience into the inner most struggles of the characters. Employing a photographic approach reminiscent of legendary Japanese auteur Yasujiro Ozu, Kurosawa barely moves the camera at all in many of the scenes, adding to the sense of confinement felt throughout the story.

The sound design as well is extremely compelling, and acts as almost another character. Everything from the ticking of a clock, to the industrial sounds of the suburb, are presented in a specific, rhythmic pattern, emphasizing the almost unbearable monotony experienced by the characters.

More than just a story of one family’s struggle for survival, the film is a commentary on greater Japan as a whole.
“Whether they notice it or not, these people are constantly influenced by the greater forces of the exterior world, and they continue to be tossed around by the impacts,” Kurosawa says. “The small family in the film is directly connected to Japan, and Japan is connected directly to the world. Is it better to desperately protect something that exists inside? Or, is it better to release everything into the exterior? So many Japanese people are faced with these two choices on a daily basis, and they live the 21st century in confusion. Of course, I am one of these people as well.”

Tokyo Sonata, presents an engaging examination not only on the troubles of contemporary Japan, but global society as well, and through Kurosawa’s meticulous direction and rich camera design, is able to bring about a moving portrait of a family’s desire to connect to each other and the world around them.