I watched Yasujiro Ozu’s Tokyo Story twice, and only during the second viewing did I understand who the characters were and how they were related to each other. Such is Ozu’s style, explains David Desser, editor of Ozu’s Tokyo Story, a collection of writings about the 1953 drama. He provides the audio commentary and describes the director’s high expectation of his audience to keep up. Indeed, exposition can be intrusive to a film’s narrative, but here is a film that could have used an intrusion.

Tokyo Story is widely considered a masterpiece and one of the greatest films ever made. I wished I liked it more. Its slow, peculiar rhythms are alienating. Its tendency to introduce characters and scenarios without explaining them yields confusion. Its resistance to displays of emotion makes it difficult to connect to characters. It has grand ideas about the gulfs that develop in families as they grow apart, but expresses them so faintly I could scarcely perceive them. This is Ozu’s most “melodramatic” film, says Desser, which is sort of like identifying the world’s wettest desert.

The story begins with a mother and father, Tomi (Chieko Higashiyama) and Shukishi (Chishu Ryu), who reside in the Japanese seaside town of Onomichi. Their four children are grown. Kyoko (Kyoko Kagawa) is the youngest and still lives with her parents but is quickly nearing marriage age. Their son Keizo (Shiro Osaka) works for a railroad in Osaka. Their eldest, Koichi (So Yamamura) and Shige (Haruko Sugimura), are married and live the furthest away, in Tokyo. Koichi is a neighborhood doctor, and Shige runs a beauty salon. Most of these characters are introduced in the first fifteen minutes or so, along with Shige’s husband, Koichi’s wife and children, and Noriko (Setsuko Hara), the widow of Tomi and Shukishi’s third son, who died in combat during World War II. The introductions are made brusquely, if at all, so by a pivotal death-bed scene late in the film I was still counting progeny.

Tomi and Shukichi travel to Tokyo to visit their children and grandchildren, who can hardly be bothered. Koichi is busy. The grandkids are cranky at having to be displaced in their small suburban home. Shige claims to have no time for her parents, but in reality she rivals Lizzie Borden for filial contempt. In the film’s broadest characterization, she pouts, sneers, complains, and finally conspires with her brother to banish their parents to a hotel where they will be out of sight — they are already long out of mind. No, she shows no homicidal inclinations, but perhaps only because she is too lazy to put forth the effort.

The elders’ blood relations are shown in stark contrast to Noriko, who despite no longer being obligated to the family demonstrates much greater affection and respect for her former in-laws. She hosts them even though she can ill afford to with her limited living space and the demands of her job. She is nicer than she needs to be, often nicer than she should be. Setsuko Hara’s performance presents an almost pathological sweetness; she grins politely through situations that would test the virtue of Mother Teresa. Just as Shige is monstrous, Noriko is relentlessly benevolent; she is less a character than a receptacle of goodness.

The heart of the film is in the third act after the visit has ended, when a sudden medical emergency brings the family together, yet illustrates how far the family has come apart. It is the most emotionally expressive and involving of the film’s segments; even Noriko drops her guarded pleasantness to reveal untapped reserves of sadness, loneliness, even guilt. Desser describes this as melodrama, but as emotional displays go it’s more of a trickle than a downpour.

Ozu’s visual style is spare and unassuming. He prefers low-angle static shots that capture the details of his physical spaces, allowing characters to enter and exit around the margins. But his simplicity is not necessarily beneficial. His objective camera makes the film more remote, even a bit sterile. I recognized a similar stile from 2008’s Flight of the Red Balloon, which I also found cold. It was directed by Chinese filmmaker Hou Hsiao-hsien, who was influenced by Ozu. It’s art under glass, showing us everyday lives but holding us at a distance. The result is a pristine diorama, but in the end I longed for a film that would let me in.

Watch a trailer for the movie here: