My timing for watching Tokyo Story (Tokyo monogatari) couldn't have occurred at a more opportune moment, for as soon as I next logged on to my computer after viewing the film, I read an email from my dad about an uncle, who had just passed away. Immediately, thoughts of childhood visits to my uncle's farm returned and the usual regrets we all feel when a family member passes away—how we never appreciated them enough. Similarly, Ozu's film examines how children separate from their parents and live independent lives, often without regard for their parents' needs.

Very popular in Japan but largely ignored in the U.S. Yasujiro Ozu creates unforgettable tapestries of middle class Japanese family life that seep into your consciousness with as pronounced effects as water on the Grand Canyon. The immediate subject matter quietly centers on Japanese family life, but poignantly broadens into universal issues that all can relate to. Such is the case in Tokyo Story.

Asian cinema fans should not expect fast action, martial arts, or samurai warrior sequences from an Ozu film. His films are more like thoughtful and heartfelt meditations on family matters that gradually introduce characters that the audience feels intimate with by the time the film ends, doing so without special effects wizardry and without lazy scriptwriting that fills in the backstory with off-screen narration. It takes a few minutes to adjust to the family setting, just as it does with real people but no one reveals the inner heart better than Ozu.

In Tokyo Story an elderly couple (Chishu Ryu and Chieko Higashiyama) from the small town of Onomichi travel to post-war Tokyo to visit their children, who obviously have not visited their parents in some time. Painful scenes follow that show their children as disinterested and selfish, and the grandchildren as even more self-centered and spoiled. Very little is as the elderly Hirayamas hope for. Although the self-deprecating couple expects their children to be busy, they thought their pediatrician son would live in a nicer home, and they anticipated a longer and more satisfying visit with their children.

Ozu's objective camera captures the small spaces of the apartments intimately without close-ups, so even though very little happens on the surface the family dysfunction reveals itself. The initial visit is awkwardly painful for the parents, who feel like intruders on their busy children, outwardly polite but pre-occupied with their own agendas. They express the idea that the parents must be tired and ready for bed, shuttling them off to their quarters well before they are ready, but this allows Ozu's camera to naturally record their thoughts, reflecting on their children.

They look forward to a sightseeing trip of Tokyo with their pediatrician son, and later an outing at the theater with daughter Shige (Haruko Sugimura), but both are canceled when their children say they cannot leave work. Only their widowed daughter-in-law, Noriko (Setsuko Hara) takes a day off work to show them the sights and genuinely seems happy to see them, unlike their children. A small humorous moment occurs on the Tokyo tour bus if you look very closely at the elderly couple's faces for their reactions to the modern bustle of the post-war city.

Noriko provides Mrs. Hirayama the happiest moments of their Tokyo visit when she offers her hospitality unselfishly the night before they are to leave. Contrasted directly with Shige's negative remarks about her father's past drinking habits and her mother's “fatness,” Noriko sincerely expresses love for her mother-in-law and her deceased son, who certainly had his share of faults.

That same evening Mr. Hirayama is left to his own devices and meets up with a long lost friend for a night of drinking and reminiscing, and Shige rudely greets him and is disgusted when a policeman brings her father and his drinking buddy to her home. Again, Ozu's camera captures the generational breakdown without pretense. The old traditional ways have broken down in the modern Tokyo apartments, where the stressed out younger generation no longer respects their ancestry.

All this sets up the emotionally wrenching scenes to come that have to rank among the top tear inducing moment in cinema. Truly Japanese in character, Tokyo Story captures the profound and infinite through simple vignettes and unsurpassed composition that juxtapose modern industry, trains, and clocks with humanity. All serving as a reminder that the most pleasurable moments in cinema don't consist of mind numbing action sequences and special effects, but are quiet and thoughtful small moments that touch the heart and soul.