Film Review: Maborosi

Maborosi (Kore-eda Hirokazu, 1995)
In Japanese, with English subtitles

I was watching Late Spring by Yasujiro Ozu a while ago but in the middle of the film the subtitles transformed into an array of ?'s, $'s and #'s. I had to stop. However, I was in a mood of watching a Japanese film. I checked my library and the first one that caught my attention was Maborosi, a 1995 film by Kore-eda Hirokazu. I saw the film in 1997 or 1998. I almost completely forgot about the film except for my recollection of scenes suggestive of visual poetry.

Now, watching it the second time was like watching Tarkovsky and Ozu in one film. Indeed, there's a visual poetry in a lot of important scenes - those scenes that reflect what the main character feels and what she tries to forget. There were distant shots, which, I suppose, were suggestive of her loneliness and occasional coldness. Her agreeing to live with her second husband in a remote fishing village I think was indicative of her attempt to move on from the tragedy that involved her first husband. Her first husband died in what seemed to be a suicide without her  figuring out why it happened.

It's Tarkovskian because I felt like watching a 'moving' photography. It's Ozu-esque because the camera didn't move, letting the characters appear in and disappear from a frame. This combination worked excellently for this movie. Such scenes, in my opinion, were suggestive of the characters' having been stagnated in a place or a predicament.

Rating: 4.0/4.0