Maborosi
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Movie Reviews of Maborosi
Movie Review: DVD has a bad transfer
Summary: 3 Stars
I saw the movie last night. Just wanted to warn people that the DVD has a bad transfer. It made it almost unwatchable for me.Movie Review: Threatens Sleeping Pill Manufacturers
Summary: 1 Stars
I watched "Maborosi." I forgot it completely. I rented it again, suffering through the entire film. While I acknowledge that many have found a lyrical meaning in this film, I was not one of them. Many of the scenes are shot so darkly, that you find yourself watching a crack of sky through a window for several minutes. Actually, I can look out my own window to experience that. Hirokazu Kore-eda was a documentary filmmaker before shooting this first feature. It is a major snooze-fest, threatening sleeping pill manufacturers as a better cure for insomnia.
Yukimo is a young married woman. Played by Makiko Esumi who would also star in "Pistol Opera" in 2002, she is a mostly stoic figure. Stoicism can be used effectively such as how Michael Caine employs it in the recent film Sleuth. There, the words that are said help the viewer interpret Caine's frozen stares as deep and assign thought and emotion. Here, there is very little dialogue so Esumi mostly seems blank. Obviously, the film is about grief. I've experienced this emotion. Grief can make you wail and can close you from the world. Unfortunately, Esumi does not keep us interested.
First husband Ikuo played by Tadanobu Asano who won the Best Actor prize from the Venice International Film Festival in 2003 for another very boring film, Last Life in the Universe, adds some life as the husband. Why he dallies on the train tracks is a mystery. I thought he must have been wearing an I-pod or a Walkman back in 1995. But no! We're expected to believe that a dad with a three-month old is so depressed that he shows no signs of it and then plays splatter with the railroad train. The film really is unexplained and does not make sense.
Goki Kashiyama is very good as the son Yuichi. Taketoshi Naito who was in "Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence," plays Tamio, Yukimo's second husband. They cavort and have some fun. Much of it is in the dark. This film won Best Cinematography for Masao Nakabori at the 1995 Venice Film Festival. There are nice sequences on the beach. The funeral procession on the beach is impressive and is also extremely long. In the end, "Illusory Light" is an illusory film. I'm happy for those for whom it has captured their imaginations. For me, I hope that I will now recall the film so that I never have to sit through it again. Taxi!
Movie Review: TERRIBLE..TERRIBLE BORING MOVIE!
Summary: 1 Stars
I am a lover of Japanese movies. I even purchased a masterpiece (Sadakan No. 8) for $50 for a VHS. I have a huge collection of Japanese jems. So I know what I'm talking about. Heck I'm even Japanese myself :-)
But let me tell you--MABOROSI must mean MAJOR BORING..This movie can be condensed easily into 30 minutes and probably be still too boring. Yumiko is traumatized as a kid as grandma says she wants to go away and die...please stop you are too young to die..but grandma leaves anyway and Yumiko dreams about this repeatedly. Yumiko has a hubby and kid and hubby commits suicide. She mops throughout the movie from start to finish. She wears nothing but black and rarely smiles and sustains a flat affect. A totally unrealistic movie; in real life, Yumiko would have to worry about getting a job and pay bills rather than worrying about her psychological traumas because she has a kid to take care of. (her husband was some kind of laborer.)
THE MOVIE IS DREADFULLY BORING. BORING. BORING. BORING. It goes into trivial daily life and irrelevant conversations and becomes the whole of the movie with very little plot. It goes on and on and on making you sleepy sleepy sleepy...
Masterpiece--HOW ON EARTH????? It's another example how winning an international film prize does not necessarily mean it is good.
Now if you have problems with insomnia or need a sleep remedy-please by all means purchase this. It's hard to follow only because it puts you to sleep sooo well! I'm not exaggerating.
If you decide to purchase this BORING movie, and believe the hype of the critics as it is highly overrated, well, I warned you.
Thank you.
Movie Review: boring, overrated
Summary: 1 Stars
I never saw this film in the theater, so I can't be completely sure that this is how it's supposed to look. But, assuming that the DVD transfer is accurate, I find all the praise for Kore-eda's "painterly" visuals completely undeserved. The film is shot entirely with natural light; so, in the daytime indoor scenes, the glare from windows and doorways blots out or silhouettes everything; and in the nightime indoor scenes, everything is murky and underexposed. It all looks horribly amateurish. The outdooor scenes come off somewhat better, but slightly grainy overall, almost as if they had been shot on a digital camera.
Cinematography (and possible bad transfer) aside, there's also the matter of Kore-eda's excessively static direction. I can appreciate the still, quiet camera work of Ozu or Jarmusch, but Kore-eda takes this style and pushes it to ridiculous lengths. His camera NEVER moves, not even for an occasional cut or panning or tracking shot. It just sits there, dull and inert, while the scenes drag on and on and then abruptly end, almost arbitrarily. I guess this technique is supposed to impart a contemplative effect to a scene, but again, it just seems amateurish.
The performance by fashion-model-turned-actress Makiko Esumi, as the grieving young widow Yumiko, reflects the director's numb, soporific visual style. Instead of being quietly torn by grief, she comes across as merely affectless. Maybe the director wanted to use a zombie-like non-actress and comatose camera work to convey the numbness of grief, but the result is far from edifying or moving or even interesting. The ultimate effect of this movie is only stupefying boredom.
Movie Review: doesnt work dull and boring
Summary: 1 Stars
interesting story line but shallow and goes nowhere. kubrick style drawn out and paced shots are unimaginative, poorly composed, and add little or nothing to the experience. looks like the ending is just a contrivance to exit a lost story line. i've lived in rural japan and it's the most boring place on earth (perhaps the intent here but hardly something you'd pay money to suffer thru or for masochists only), you dont think the younger generations flee to the cities for no reason at all?