Worth Watching: Still Walking (2008)

Title: Still Walking (Aruitemo aruitemo)
Director: Hirokazu Koreeda
Language: Japanese
Rating: Not rated

From Wikipedia, Fair use

An elderly wife and husband host their children and grandchildren for the day; the reason behind the family gathering isn't obvious at first, and at least one of the children, Ryota (Hiroshi Abe), wishes he didn't have to come at all, to be reminded that his parents consider him a big disappointment because of his career choice and because he married a widowed mother, Yukari (Yui Natsukawa).

But the movie isn't a stormy drama. The members of the Yokoyama family are polite, for the most part; they try not to be confrontational. They mill around the house, cooking together, talking about this and that, teasing each other into laughter and wounding each other with oblique remarks. There are beautiful close-ups of food simmering in pans, of the hands of young children reaching for pink blossoms in sunlit air. But the movie is never self-conscious about its beauty, just as it isn't self-conscious about the quiet moments of pettiness and cruelty that maintain the tension in the film, even if there's nothing earth-shaking going on on the surface.

The director likes to arrive at things sidelong. One of my favorite techniques that he uses is to have a character stand alone listening to other characters talk in a different room. There's a strange feeling of both connection and isolation, of listening in on people who are closer to you than anyone else but in some ways are still strangers.

An eerie moment in the film is when you hear the talk and laughter of the family posing for a photo off-screen, while on screen the camera lingers on a room where the photo of a deceased family member, Junpei, is displayed. Junpei has been dead for a dozen years, but now it feels like he's alive and listening. Memories of the dead are evoked to hold people together or to drive a wedge between them.

Week in Seven Words #11

brighten
After a night of little sleep and a few days in a slump, I don't think I can be inspired that afternoon. I'm mistaken. Her lecture thrums with intelligence and possibility.

countdown
These are days spent counting different things. I don't want to think about how many more afternoons like this I'll have in their company, these people with whom I've found such a shared language. Of course I plan to see them in the future, but it won't be quite the same.

discarded
Walking home I spot a lovely white carnation in a garbage can. It remains upright among discarded newspapers and food cartons. A few blocks later, while crossing a courtyard, I see a squirrel sitting in a large shrubbery pot and tearing through a bun. He probably snatched it up from the garbage can three feet away, where someone had tossed it away nearly whole.

inexpectation
Expect to be continually surprised. What I say may cause a young man to snort wine from his nose. A young woman who pops in and out of my life will stand with me in the entranceway of an apartment building for close to an hour pouring out her doubts and feelings and hopes about some of life's most personal matters. Other people will sometimes be there and sometimes won't be there; every moment they're present is to be savored, for however long it may last.

sealed
While quickly translating text, the sensation of running up against gates tightly shut. We send out our hands and fumble for keyholes or crevices; hopefully the means will occur to us - the root, the context, the sensation of I saw that word ten verses ago, didn't I?

torpid
The urn beneath the drainpipe is flooded. In the froth of rain drops and run-off, long green leaves churn listlessly.

vantage
From ground level it looks like the tree has shed all its blossoms. But from the second floor window, I spy some flowers peeping from the uppermost branches; pink and white, they're surrounded by blowzy brilliant green.