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Maborosi Director: Hirokazu Koreeda Number of Items: 1 Format: Color, Widescreen Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated) Running Time: 110 minutes Studio: New Yorker Films Product Group: DVD Release Date: 2000-11-21 Buy from Amazon

Customer Reviews: Total numer of reviews: 29 Average rating: 4.0 "Excellent movie! Poor transfer." I'm very enthusiastic about this movie (see my earlier review), however it should be noted that the quality of the print is extremely poor. The movie was transferred to tape and subtitled for release in the U.S. and unfortunately the DVD was taken from this low quality tape transfer rather than being printed from the film. If a better print were released in the U.S. I'd rush to buy it. How about it Criterion Collection? "Lyrical, lovely, poetic" While this film requires some patience (if action's your thing try Crouching Tiger) it more than rewards your attention; the consistent long shots might play better in a theater, however. After a grueling Wong Kar Wai retrospective where I despaired of mainstream straight white male critics ever being able to point me in the right direction I was overjoyed to find some solace in this gentle, slowly-unfolding, elegant little movie. What I loved about it was not so much its female-centeredness (which I appreciated) but its almost documentary-esque unveiling of her life in the day to day, revealed not with action but with the small details and environmental texture that make up and shade her response to her recent loss. If you require American-style moral certainty and a narrative arc you'll be disappointed. So many shots linger in my mind from this film but none so much as the long shot that ends the film in a breathtaking, minimalist coda. "DVD has a bad transfer" 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. "A POETIC ELEGY ON LIFE & DEATH." This film deserves ten stars not five. Mr. Kore-eda uses natural light, both in nocturnal and diurnal scenes. It is one of the most carefully and beautifully shot films I have ever seen. The lighting and photography in the interior scenes is incomparable and masterful. The scenario is restrained and the acting is absolutely first rate, restrained, understated, powerful -- exactly like the ocean, which functions as one of the symbolic characters in the film. What is the ocean but the unconsciousness of the working mind, the stillness sometimes, the violence sometimes, the tranquility sometimes, the wildness sometimes? In each moment there is a recognition of goodbye, and it may be the final goodbye, it may be the shock of someone leaving and never returning, no matter how much we love them, no matter how much we yearn for them. The loss of someone we treasure. Every element in this film: lighting, cinematography, music, acting, direction, scenario -- all works together as a forceful poem to remind us of the death in life, and the life in death. It is one of the most uplifting and spiritual films I have ever seen, yet it never once preaches about loss and the attempt to restructure a life after such an unendurable loss. There is no religion in this film, it is a film about the spiritual transcendence within ordinary life. This film is an absolutely elegant but deeply felt prayer to affirm the meaning of being alive. Everyone should see this film. "Quiet, Melancholy, Introspective" With a bare minimum of action, dialogue, or even plot Koreeda reveals the delicacy and complexity of his characer's natures. It is particularly moving to watch tenderness and intimacy develop even in an apparently arranged marriage and through the unresolved grief of an incomprehensible suicide. But the grief is the focus of the film.