One of the 10 greatest films about childhood according to the BFI
The BFI (British Film Institute) made a list of the films they considered the best depictions about childhood and this was included. I watched the film because it was included on the list. This was their brief snippet of the film and it contains spoilers:
Made near the end of the silent era in Japan, Yasujiro Ozu’s 1932 film I Was Born But… takes place in suburban Tokyo, where the Yoshi family has just moved with their two young sons, Keiji and Ryoichi (Tomio Aoki and Hideo Sugawara). New kids on the block, Keiji and Ryoichi immediately fall foul of the local bullies, playing truant to avoid their new nemeses.
Proud of their salaryman father, the two brothers later see a home movie of him with his colleagues, and realise the dad they idolise is actually a doormat to his peers. Tantrums follow, Ozu pinpointing – with unerring charm and a great deal of humour – that awful moment when a young child realises their parents aren’t the Goliaths they thought they were. All the boisterous rough-and-tumble of boyhood is here, mapped without recourse to sentimentality or cutesiness. Small wonder that, for contemporary child-centred films like So Yong Kim’s [i]Treeless Mountain (2008) and Hirokazu Koreeda’s I Wish (2011), Ozu’s gem remains a touchstone.
I agree mostly with their review of the film. It was touching and funny. Well worth seeing if one hasn't already.
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