Maborosi

 

Picture: B     Sound: B     Extras: B-     Film: A-

 

 

In an effort to elevate cinema to the level of “art,” the writers and filmmakers of Cahiers du Cinema (Truffaut, Bazin, and many others) privileged the film director as an author able to craft personal expression amidst the pressures and constraints of the American studio systems.  Central to their intellectual project of validating cinema as an art form was identifying the literary qualities of cinema, such as the author, or “auteur” in the case of filmmaking.  It is only fitting that the dawn of film theory was heavily influenced by contemporary literary criticism, where the author was the center of critical inquiry.  Although auteur theory still has some academic purchase, it seems as if cinema has always been riding the aesthetic coattails of other art forms.  Such is the case with Kore-eda Hirokazu’s Maborosi.

 

Marobosi marks Hirokazu’s feature film debut.  The film won him top honors at the Chicago International Film Festival and was screened at numerous other film festivals.  The film is indeed beautiful; each frame is well balanced and non judgmental, hints of Ozu and Kubrick are found throughout the film.  Hirokazu is exceptionally patient, holding a shot long enough for us to appreciate its aesthetic form.  The film is shot like a journey through a gallery, allowing us to watch the film more as a series of portraits rather than a practice in self-conscious filmmaking.  Hirokazu balances the grandeur of the Japanese countryside and coastal areas with attention to the mundane technologies we have come to rely upon.

 

Although the film is aesthetically pleasing, the film is not a grand artistic statement despite it best efforts.  Yet, films like these are lauded by critics as masterpieces and artistic triumphs.  There is no question that film is an artistic medium; the Cahiers folks, Rudolph Arnheim, and countless filmmakers have secured cinema as an artistic medium.  But the ghosts of literature and painting haunt the critical assessment of cinema.  My guess is that this film enjoys critical accolades because it mirrors the aesthetic sensibilities of painting.  This is not a blue collar harangue against the art film (a little pretension once in a while never hurt anyone), but the film does not fully realize it emotive qualities.

 

Maborosi follows the story of Yukimo through the death of her first husband and her second marriage.  Yukimo and husband Ikuo live a life of seeming romantic bliss, regardless of the relationship being noticeably one-sided.  Ikuo is hit by a train during a morning walk, leaving Yukimo to care for their infant child.  After years in mourning, cleverly conveyed through the aging child, Yukimo leaves for the coast to engage in an arranged marriage with another man who lives on a small coastal village with his young daughter.  Their first meeting at the train station, were he must hurry back to work, is markedly unromantic, yet touchingly pragmatic.  Yukimo’s melancholia soon gives way to contentment as she develops a tender relationship with her new beau and she is warmly embraced by the community.  Even the children get along swimmingly (the shot of them walking along a lake is exceptionally stunning).  However, her misery returns when she revisits Osaka where she discovers that Ikuo knew the train was approaching, yet did not get out of it path.  Troubled by the senseless suicide, Yukimo becomes even more distant until she discovers her own form of happiness.

 

Although visually powerful and narratively remarkable, the film would be better served to further investigate the relationship between her past and future.  Svetlana Boym, in an exceptional investigation on the power of nostalgia, notes that nostalgia is a critical exercise where the past can help inform the practices of the present, with an eye to the future (her theory is much more developed than that, but this will do).  Consequently, Hirokazu ought to have a better reconciled Yukimo’s past tragedy and how it informs her present and future relationships, and not necessarily come to the conclusion than she must “move on”; a trite way to phrase it, but if the shoe fits…I am not a big fan of critiquing a film on the grounds of its narrative coherence, but if one wishes to make a greater artistic statement, further investigation into the mindset of Yukimo would enhance such a account.

 

This New Yorker video release offers a widescreen, non-anamorphic transfer that is a tad too grainy.  Moreover, the sound is rather muted; especially with the long shots of the ocean.  The extra features include both American and Japanese trailers (which are rather interesting in terms of how the film is marketed), a director’s profile, and a series of production notes.  Both the profile and the notes are text, and somewhat informative.  Hirokazu has only made three films, After Life possibly his best, thus the profile is rather scant, but he has cut his filmmaking teeth on documentaries.  However, if one is interested in expanding a DVD library to include exemplars of modern Japanese cinema, one could do a lot worse than Maborosi.       

 

 

-   Ron Von Burg