Madadayo
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Movie Reviews of Madadayo
Movie Review: Madadayo
Summary: 5 Stars
Akira Kurosawa's atypical swan song, unabashedly sentimental and set on a small, intimate stage, reflects the director himself at twilight, confronting his own impending mortality. (Kurosawa actually passed away five years after the film's debut, at age 88). Mirroring the astonishing journey and legacy of its prodigious director, this deceptively simple film is a moving affirmation of a life richly lived, and the respect and admiration that comes with the wisdom of experience. It would be a shame to miss the uplifting joys--and occasional sorrows-- of "Madadayo."Movie Review: Not Yet!
Summary: 5 Stars
Madadayo brings you to Japan during the years of World War II and years the war. During these years the story is based around an old teacher is retiring and ends up in a misfortunate situation after another. However, his character is a strong and colorful character that also is a very real person. Madadayo brings the audience very close to this character and the audience gets to feel his agony and happiness in a very real manner. A film for people who want to feel the character and who wants a story to ponder on for sometime after the film.Movie Review: A perfect fim!
Summary: 5 Stars
This film is without question one of the best films i have ever seen! It's a great example of how Kurosawa could impart immense beauty and meaning into simple and visualy stunning scenes.Perhaps "Rambo" is a better film for people like James Smith.
Movie Review: Movie Review
Summary: 5 Stars
This was an excellent movie. It was very touching and contained a lot of great Japanese style humor.Movie Review: Come out, come out, wherever you are...
Summary: 4 Stars
In Japan children play "hide and seek" in a version very much like the game I played as a child forty years ago in the U.S. While one child hides their eyes the other children find hiding places. In Japan the person who is about to "go seek" calls out "Maadha kai?", which means "Are you ready?" and if those who are hiding are not ready they respond "Madadayo!", which means "not yet!"
After six decades of brilliant filmmaking Akira Kurasawa became most introspective with his final film. The hero is a professor, played by Tatsuo Matsumura. (The Japanese word for teacher is "sensei" and it is a title of the highest honor. So sad that "teacher" is not a title of honor in American society.)
The Sensei is retiring. Many of his final students are the children of earlier students, and they all love and respect the old man. The older ex-students clamor around the Sensei's house, sharing old stories and finally coming up with the idea to have an annual birthday celebration.
We watch the first celebration - attended only by the adult male former students who stand one at a time to offer some praise to the retired professor. It gradually degenerates into a loud drunken cha-cha line which results in the wartime occupying American MPs being called. I was relieved that the G.I.s take one look at the good-natured celebration, share a laugh themselves, then leave the revelers to their party.
At the end of the film we see the last birthday party for the Sensei, two decades after his retirement from teaching. The students still remember and love the Professor, but now the party is attended by wives and children and grandchildren. I marveled that so many years after his retirement, in a country that had gone through war and bombing and plague and pestilence, the Professor had generated such respect in his students that they still honored him years after his retirement.
The cozy home the Professor shares with his wife is destroyed in the bombing of World War II, and they move to a shack at the edge of the smoldering town ruins, but still the dutiful students come by to pay their respects.
There is not really much plot to be found, and much of the action consists of sitting around tables talking. But the film is about love and respect and honor and the ways that those things are perpetuated, sometimes in the harshest surroundings.