utterly wonderful,
was shown yesterday at the prince charles cinema -hardly a dry eye in the audience at the end: awesome last scene.
Heart-warming stuff not a 100 miles away from Kaurismaki I felt; or Tati-"mon oncle" and Imamura-"the eel", in a way.
A credit to the 7th art.
I don't know about Kurosawa Kiyoshi's best film - I haven't seen them all, but this was a good and a very relevant story to what's happening in Japan today. The country was known as one of the best in terms of offering job security, but now they're faced with downsizing and outsourcing just like what you're seeing around the world.
As good as the film was, I felt the scene with the burglar, as well as the mall incident (with the flash-back device used) was not necessary. I guess the director had to find some way for Megumi to hit a breaking point, but how he played with event chronology was not necessary.
If I am to compare this to Imamura's UNAGI, I would consider UNAGI a better film, but they're different stories and not much similarity to draw a comparison from.
Possible spoilers
I thought that the burglar scenes were very relevant to the Mother's own emotional breakdown. She may now be used to the demanding and authoritative ways of her current husband and thus attaches herself to the burglar, who is equally controlling and dominant. She comes back to the burglar after going into the mall like she comes back to the family eventually. The scenes of the mother with (and without) the burglar are just as important as the father's own crisis, in my opinion.
I thought that the burglar scenes were very relevant to the Mother's own emotional breakdown.As I wrote, what didn't work with me was not the element of the burgler serving as the trigger, but the way that plotpoint was revealed - via a non-linear shuffle of events and flash-backs. From my POV, it seems to have been done so to reduce duration for the film, or was thought up as a solution/gimmick to the scene... It was just a little too much of an undued Tarantino homage for me. share
My favorite film of his has always been Cure, it was the first of Kiyoshi's films that watched and I also really enjoyed Bright Future. Pulse and Charisma were also pretty good.
Ozpunk
La mort n'ouvre aucune porte.
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It's certainly on a par with Bright Future, which I still revere (although I have an Asian imported DVD of the original full-length version, from which KK subsequently cut over 20 minutes). Heck, Bright Future and Tokyo Sonata are BOTH masterpieces, and KK rarely makes a dud (though I'm not entirely a fan of Doppelganger).
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