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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 |
"A lovely, haunting film" Maborosi is a beautifully shot movie. It is shot in real time, showing the slowness of life and grief. As Yumiko sits in dark rooms, her face heartbreakingly restrained, she is surrounded by grief. Sometimes the darkness was so thick I could not make out the faces of the characters, but this is a movie of sweetness that is never sentimental. "a beautifully subtle meditation on grief" This film is full of beautiful imagery as a japanese island lays the backdrop for a woman to quietly come to terms with her husbands suicide. The movie seems at times to play out in real time which will enthrall some and exasperate others. Yet I feel that if someone has found the patience for subtitles they can dig a little deeper and muster the thoughtfulness necessary as the main character's grief process is painted in slow satisfying strokes. "An evocative, moving and strangely captivating film." This movie glides gently along, apace with the slow healing of a young widow's loss. With utterly minimal characterisation, the director still manages to capture vivid glimpses of Japan, both old and young. Most memorable is the beautiful and dramatic coastal scenery which is hauntingly powerful. At times, a heartbreakingly lonely film, it proceeds with its own calm logic, and the effect is quietly, yet deeply moving. "powerful" this film was incredibly powerful, though its charms could easily be lost on a western audience. it is a film of subtlety, poetry and naturalism. The story is told less through its minimalist dialogue than the stunningly beautiful patterns of life as depicted by the japanese landscape. |