Most moving scene - Nijûshi no hitomi (1954) Discussion

[–] dcbill-1 16 years ago

This scene had me crying also, with only of one of the men left him being blind, with the new bike in the back ground, 7 out out of 12 students in 20 years is actually a quite good ratio with 10 years of war being in between with the hard life! Having just watched last night from Region #2 Bo jing Company disc usually at Chinese video places under $5.00 has English or Chinese subtitles, of coarse their is UK disc also.

reply

[–] 16 years ago

[deleted]

[–] jpb58 15 years ago

The re-union scene, but also, strangely enough, the scene where the teacher sees the girl child who has become an obvious prostitute from being sold by her own father!

And I can't believe in an entire village there couldn't be one nursing mother who might have volunteered her boobs to save that baby! Or milk a cow or goat. Do SOMETHING. Not just let it starve!

reply

[–] Eric-1226 15 years ago

Or milk a cow or goat

lol Recall that earlier in the film, when the kids were all on their way to see Ms. Oishi after she had her leg injured, they passed a goat alongside the road, and they all took turns giving it a pat on the rump as they filed by. Well, there's at least one goat for ya'. lol

Anyway, for me, the most moving scene was when Ms. Oishi, now 18 years later, resumed teaching duties at the same elementary school at which she had started her teaching career. As she took on the new class and called out each child's name, it slowly dawned on her that many of the kids were the sons/daughters/relatives of many of the kids in her very first class, 18 years earlier. It was very moving to see her struggle to fight back the tears.

Also moving: when she visited the small cemetery on the hill, with the grave markers for the boys who had fallen in battle. Sad legacy of WWII for the boys who, for one reason or another, felt compelled to die for the emperor.

reply

[–] jpb58 15 years ago

Or when she visits the girl child who is dying of TB. She couldn't even touch her to give her a hug.

reply

[–] Eric-1226 15 years ago

Good observation. I didn't even notice that, about her not being able to touch the girl with TB.

"It's going to get worse before it gets better." - The White House

reply

[–] excel99 15 years ago

And I can't believe in an entire village there couldn't be one nursing mother who might have volunteered her boobs to save that baby! Or milk a cow or goat. Do SOMETHING. Not just let it starve!

Gee, I wonder why nobody thought of that...

In the last years of the war, a lot of people starved to death in Japan. Don't you think they milked every cow and goat they could find? Don't you think mothers gave all the milk they could to their children?

THAT'S the point here! The mother's breasts were barren and there were no more cows or goats! That's the usual course of events in a famine. It doesn't mean nobody tried.

reply

[–] jpb58 15 years ago

You're not exactly observant, are you?

The mother died YEARS BEFORE THE WAR and she died only a few days after giving birth; it's never stated her breasts were barren. You're reading something into the film that wasn't there.

The baby died because none of the neighbors came to offer milk for the baby, either from a wetnurse or from a farm animal. This was also an abusive home -- the father later slugs the daughter because she refuses to leave the town with relatives. The father was morose and unloving and selfish and only thought of himself and not the welfare of his two surviving daughters. Then one dies because he couldn't live up to his responsibilities and the other is sold off to work in a restaurant before she could finish school.

reply

[–] excel99 15 years ago

Excuse my mistype. I meant the mothers' breasts (as in anyone else who might have been nursing at the time). I know the mother of the baby was dead. I was referring to anyone else who might have been able to wetnurse the baby.

Yeah, I get it that this was a pretty abusive kind of family situation. But your point about 'don't just let the baby die' is kind of silly, I think. In a small village of this kind, with most of the able bodied males already drafted into the army and the army taking away just about all the livestock and produce for the war effort starvation happened. Not on a huge scale, like happened under different circumstances in Russia and China during the 20th century, but the poorest of the poor faced this kind of situation. It doesn't mean that people didn't help each other out, or that parents and villagers just 'let the babies die.' It just means that resources were stretched too far, and there was nothing that could be done.

You talk about a wetnurse; well this was a pretty small village, and with most husbands drafted into the army, there was likely very few (if any) nursing women in the village. Those that were had to think about their own children first. You talk about livestock animals; by this point, there were likely very few, if any.

Babies have special nutritional needs. You can't just feed them anything. There may have been enough to keep the adults and older children barely alive, but if there are going to be casualties from a famine, you can bet the children will be first. It's always like this, but not because of uncaring parents.

Famines are like that. They are cruel. It doesn't mean the people were cruel. I knew a family that lived in Cambodia under Pol Pot, and I was shocked when I learned that one of their babies had starved to death. The description of that time I heard from one of the daughters was almost horrifying. She said they had somehow managed to get some space on a flat car of train, and the family knew they were all facing starvation so they were going to try to get across the border into Thailand, and then to a refugee camp. The baby had been crying non-stop for days, but there was nothing to give it, except water, which obviously didn't help much. As they were riding the daughter fell aspleep. When she woke up, the mother was holding the baby, but it wasn't crying anymore. She knew the baby had died. Nobobdy cried, nobody said anything. She said it was inevitable, as much as they all loved the baby. The mother would have gladly died to save the baby's life, but that's just not how it works. There was NOTHING to give the baby to keep it alive. There was nothing that could have been done.

I thought the situation shown in this film was similar to that. The director was showing a situation where nothing could be done. It was not his intention to suggest the villagers were uncaring because they just 'let the baby die.'

reply

[–] jpb58 15 years ago

>>But your point about 'don't just let the baby die' is kind of silly, I think. In a small village of this kind, with most of the able bodied males already drafted into the army and the army taking away just about all the livestock and produce for the war effort starvation happened.

Again you're not paying attention to my post.

The family situation with the baby dying happened YEARS BEFORE WW 2 started! So your point about an army taking away men and supplies just doesn't hold. You need to pay better attention to the flow of the movie.

In a crisis situation like this, with a mother dying right after birth, and a baby about to die from malnutrition, SOMEBODY in that village could have done something to help. They came forward with foodstuffs after the teacher fell and the children went to see her, so it's strange and bizarre that no one came forward from the village to help this suffering family.

reply

[–] Xcalat3 14 years ago

Like you said the reunion scene at the end was just powerful and moving

When there's no more room in hell, The dead will walk the earth...

reply

[–] smoko 14 years ago

Yes, the reunion scene, particularly when she sees the gift of a bicycle, hit hard.

I also found the ending, with her riding the new bike to school, to be one of the best satisfying endings to a film I've seen in years. It hit exactly the right note.

reply

[–] kerchable 11 years ago

The saddest element of this fine film was the soundtrack. Let's see, they played Auld Lang Syne, No Place like Home, and What a Friend we have in Jesus. Aside from that I thought it relied too much on the tugging of heart strings. I haven't seen this much crying since the Democrats lost the House of Representatives...or the GOP saw the re-election of the Big O.

what ails most madmen is realitys grasp or escape, a paralysis of analysis

reply

[–] realistdreamer 11 years ago

This movie is a very good film and has a lot of strengths. However, I almost expected to see the credits at the end saying "Funded by the Japanese Association of Teachers". It is just presents the main character as such a saint and seems to suggest many, many teachers may be like that. I agree that the movie relies too much on tugging the hearts strings. Right from the start there were blantant scenes trying to make you cry or be sympathetic. By about two-thirds of the way through I was basically getting desensitized to the sadness and didn't find anything else sad. The movie could have been a bit more objective. Hideko Takamine definitely does a very good acting job and I will have to see her in more movies.

Also, when she went back to teaching after the war and some of her new students were children of her first students, that would mean their mothers had the children when they were 18. Plus, that would have meant most of them were conceived in 1940 or so. While Japan was not fully engaged in WW2 until the end of 1941, many men were already off in China etc. in 1940 so I didn't think that many children would be produced at such a young age at that time.

It also would have been nice to actually see the main teacher do some actual teaching - we didn't see one single scene of her actually trying to teach spelling or grammar or math to any of her students - we only saw her teaching values (and taking attendance!!).

I give this movie an 8/10. I've seen many movies by Kurasowa, Ozu and Mizoguchi and this has to rank below the top 6 or so from each of the the first two directors and the top 4 by the latter plus behind a hand-full of other Japanese movies.

reply

[–] Razzbar 10 years ago

"

It is just presents the main character as such a saint and seems to suggest many, many teachers may be like that.

"

Your viewpoint is tainted by contemporary American politics. Good grief, did it ever occur to you that in some cultures, teachers are ... (are you sitting down?) respected?

Americans are always complaining about how other countries' students do so much better... and then they go on to offer their own "solutions", without even bothering to take a look at the other countries, and their attitudes toward education and teachers.

And so what if she was "too perfect"? Do you complain about Superman, saying that men can't really fly?

As for the sentimentality, this movie was made when Japan was still a very poor country after the war, when everyone was affected by some kind of loss. Americans, Brits, Russians, etc. remember the war with varying degrees of pain and pride. For the Japanese, it was all pain. Only pain. Of COURSE Japanese people, who are sentimental by nature anyway, are going to be sentimental in a sad way about the war.

Maybe it helps my understanding that one of my parents went through the war in Japan, but I'm kind of surprised to read so many comments that seem to have no ability to relate to the movie in terms of the time period, and the country in which it takes place. WWII was not a "good war" for Japan. There aren't going to be a lot of "*beep* yeah" glory stories coming out of that war for the Japanese. I think they have a much better understanding of the true nature of war than the winners do.

reply