Still
Walking (2008), written and directed by Hirokazu Koreeda, is
a family drama of grown children visiting their elderly parents, a theme and scope
that surely invoke comparison to another family drama of an old couple visiting
their children and grandchildren who had little time for them in Yasujiro Ozu’s
Tokyo Story (1953). Koreeda in partnership with confident cinematographer
Yutaka Yamasaki has crafted a Japanese film that showcases the best of Asian cinema.
Many reviews have been written about
this gem waiting to be discovered, and I shall quote an IMDB user’s review that
Still Walking is a “rarefied
endearing family story, disharmony ambiguously masked by revelry of sumptuous food
and familial banters”. This little capsule
gives you a better idea of the film than the glowing reviews in The New
York Times which called it the “closest thing to a masterpiece”.
In an interview two years after the film’s release, Koreeda
says he resisted the comparison to Ozu that seem apt to many others, because Tokyo Story is perhaps the only film by
Ozu that most western audiences are familiar with. Koreeda would rather attribute his influence to
be another Japanese director, Mikio Naruse.
In a separate interview, Yamasaki describes his working relationship
with Koreeda; on how they both started from making documentaries, and unlike majority
of film makers who are focused within the frame, they are more aware of things
that are going on beyond the frame.
These interviews included in the DVD released by
Criterion Collection reveal the personal source of inspiration for Still Walking. Koreeda called this film his “grief work”
because he went back to rewrite the materials after his mother’s death. The director says that the matriarch in the
film played by Kirin Kiki acts and looks uncannily similar to his mother when
she was alive. Kiki embodies the mother
character with grace that comes with age, yet with spite in her otherwise
ordinary banters. Another revelation in
the interview was that most of the banters were indeed once spoken by Koreeda’s
mother. Those words of wisdom with biased
perspective and questionable provenance add to the realism of this family
drama. But, words unspoken are as
palpable as words spoken. There are
moments that hint at a character’s disquiet realization that another family
member may have known more about the secret once held close and dear.
The scenes in this film are meticulously
constructed, and the ensemble acting is outstanding. These are some of the reasons Still Walking had won various prizes from
Mar del Plata Film Festival to Asian Film Awards. Now with the release by Criterion Collection,
this film may rival Oscar-winning Departures
(2008) as the Japanese film that will be watched and talked about for years to
come. Moreover, Still Walking has the advantage of being the bookend 50-year-later
version of the classic Tokyo Story.
In spite of rehearsals and preparations, film making
like life itself finds ways to present its unexpected elements. In this film, the surprise came when the crews
were filming three generations of the Yokoyama family walking on the sea shore where
a ship that had grounded; it’s a fitting omen in the story, and a visual gift
for the storyteller. To paraphrase
Koreeda, most people have to deal with the realization that we are not going to
be what we aspired to, that we are ordinary people with idiosyncratic obsessions,
which to an objective observer, are petty. Living up to expectations and dealing with
disappointments are several of the common threads in the fabric of this seemingly
ordinary family tale, and yet the experience is extraordinary. Still
Walking is a must-see; I rented it from the library. If nothing
else, the four recipes for corn tempura, kinpira daikon, rice with edamame and
myoga ginger, and pork belly kakuni presented in the booklet may enhances our repertoire
of Japanese cuisine.
Rating:9/10
IMDB average:7.9/10
