Still Walking (2008) - (Japanese) - Hirokazu Kore-eda
This was the first movie I've watched from director Hirokazu Kore-eda, thanks to recommendation from @esanthosh, this is a real gem!
The story happens over a 24 hour period when the children (who are now adults) meets their parents in a family gathering commemorating the death anniversary of the eldest son (and the family favorite) who passed away 12 years ago, trying to save the life of a child from drowning. The tension and resentment that simmer beneath the cool and polite facade of the family members are subtly shown with careful composition, by the director (who also wrote the story). It started with me being an outsider looking into, then slowly started becoming part of that family. The pacing of the story, attention to details, composition and acting were very good. In one remarkable shot (my favorite), he shows the three generations (the grandfather, his son and the stepson) in one frame, highlighting the different values each hold and the cyclical nature of family relations, hopes and disappointments.
As with the sparse background score, the use of unrelated elements like branch of tree, flowers, train etc to show the passing of time, was nice. Olivier Assayas uses fade outs to achieve this (Krzysztof Kieślowski uses fade outs in Three Colors: Blue in a different way, to show time standing still). Kore-eda is a real humanist, and never looks down upon any of the characters, which too was a plus. I felt that the family story had a distinctive art-house french drama ethos, like Assayas' "Summer hours"(more focus on subtlety than going overboard with the drama)
From the interview with Criterion, Hirokazu Kore-eda says that this is his most autobiographical of movies, yet when he completed it, he felt like an outsider watching it. He had included many of his quirks in the younger son character Ryota (estranged with his father and having a softer stance to his mother), while the father character was mostly fictional.
The character representing the mother was his own (mannerisms, dialogues and values), and she had passed away in 2005, following a long phase of illness. Initially, he thought of covering the last 3-4 years of her life in the script, then decided to show only 24 hours (to keep the theme less gloomy) when she was healthy and in her element (and also spiteful), preparing food for her children. When he was a child he never used to like her bickering and complaining about others including her husband, now that he is an adult, he says it feels nice to do so as it releases the complex emotions welled up inside (again indicating the cyclical nature)
This was the first movie I've watched from director Hirokazu Kore-eda, thanks to recommendation from @esanthosh, this is a real gem!The story happens over a 24 hour period when the children (who are now adults) meets their parents in a family gathering commemorating the death anniversary of the eldest son (and the family favorite) who passed away 12 years ago, trying to save the life of a child from drowning. The tension and resentment that simmer beneath the cool and polite facade of the family members are subtly shown with careful composition, by the director (who also wrote the story). It started with me being an outsider looking into, then slowly started becoming part of that family. The pacing of the story, attention to details, composition and acting were very good. In one remarkable shot (my favorite), he shows the three generations (the grandfather, his son and the stepson) in one frame, highlighting the different values each hold and the cyclical nature of family relations, hopes and disappointments.
As with the sparse background score, the use of unrelated elements like branch of tree, flowers, train etc to show the passing of time, was nice. Olivier Assayas uses fade outs to achieve this (Krzysztof Kieślowski uses fade outs in Three Colors: Blue in a different way, to show time standing still). Kore-eda is a real humanist, and never looks down upon any of the characters, which too was a plus. I felt that the family story had a distinctive art-house french drama ethos, like Assayas' "Summer hours"(more focus on subtlety than going overboard with the drama)
From the interview with Criterion, Hirokazu Kore-eda says that this is his most autobiographical of movies, yet when he completed it, he felt like an outsider watching it. He had included many of his quirks in the younger son character Ryota (estranged with his father and having a softer stance to his mother), while the father character was mostly fictional.
The character representing the mother was his own (mannerisms, dialogues and values), and she had passed away in 2005, following a long phase of illness. Initially, he thought of covering the last 3-4 years of her life in the script, then decided to show only 24 hours (to keep the theme less gloomy) when she was healthy and in her element (and also spiteful), preparing food for her children. When he was a child he never used to like her bickering and complaining about others including her husband, now that he is an adult, he says it feels nice to do so as it releases the complex emotions welled up inside (again indicating the cyclical nature)
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to each, his own, i guess then.
