tiagodcarneiro
Joined Nov 2021
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The final work in the career of the legendary Japanese filmmaker Hiroshi Shimizu, "Image of a Mother" (Haha no Omokage), is a rare scope feature that I believe was only recently recovered. It is a tender story that follows a little boy named Michio, struggling with his widowed father's new arranged marriage while mourning the loss of his mother. Shimizu presents death and grief seen through the eyes of an innocent child trying to adapt to a new stepmother and stepsister.
Michio refuses to let go of the memory of his late mother, even though everyone around him urges him to forget her, to hide her picture in a drawer, and to quickly move on and embrace his father's new wife, Sonoko, as his new mother. Michio's friends and family cannot understand why he is unable to move on, as all of them have done long ago. However, things simply aren't that easy for a boy of such a young age. It takes time, patience, and a whole lot of love for a child to get over the death of a maternal figure. Time, patience and love that Sonoko tries her hardest to provide for Michio, but to no avail.
Hiroshi Shimizu accurately and gently depicts childhood innocence, family dynamics shaken by loss, and a woman's efforts to be a good mother, to love and to be loved back. Sonoko does her best to present herself as the perfect symbol of motherhood. She spoils Michio and is extremely nice, caring and loving towards him, as an attempt to be a reflection or an image of a mother, his mother. Michio appreciates his new mother's love and even calls Emiko (Sonoko's daughter) by 'sister', but he cannot call Sonoko 'mother' nor interact with her the way a child interacts with their parent. He believes that, by accepting her gifts and calling her 'mom', he would be betraying the memory of his dead mother, forever replacing and forgetting her.
Michio doesn't mean to be rude, disrespectful or inconsiderate. He knows Sonoko loves him and he likes having her and Emiko around. But him refusing to acknowledge Sonoko as his new mother, him greeting a picture of his late mother everyday, him playing with the pigeon that she gave him for his birthday before she passed-these are Michio's ways of preserving the image of his mother. However, his attitude and the distance between him and Sonoko cause great emotional distress within the family. And the climax of "Image of a Mother" is a heartbreaking scene where Michio resorts to violence and hurts Emiko after learning that she accidentally freed his pigeon. While this chaos unfolds, Sonoko can only crouch there in fear and shame of her failure as a mother, covering her ears and shutting her eyes closed without knowing what to do.
After Michio is taken to the police station for being out at night alone looking for his pigeon, Sonoko is called to the school to speak with his teacher. She is handed a letter that he wrote explaining his complex feelings and emotions during this period of grief and change. "Image of a Mother" then offers an emotionally devastating scene where the whole family reacts to the letter in tears, while Michio reads it in a heartbreaking voice-over. This scene resembles the ending of "Yi Yi" a lot, and it is just as powerful. After all that's happened, Sonoko finds it better to stay away for a while, and leaves with Emiko.
However, in a final scene that will have you bawling your eyes out as it had mine, Michio follows Sonoko and begs her not to leave while addressing her as 'mom'. At last, he has finally acknowledged Sonoko as his mother, but not because he was forced to do so. Michio does this because he finally realizes that all of his pain was being passed on to others. In his grief, he was hurting Sonoko, Emiko and his father Sadao, who only tried to love and support him. Michio finally understands that he can have two mothers, one alive in reality, and one never forgotten in memory. For a mother is a woman who loves and cares for her child, biological or not. Sonoko's love made her Michio's mother, and he finally accepted it.
Chikage Awashima gives a fantastic performance as Sonoko, a role that represents all mothers. And Michihiro Mori reaches the same heights with a genuine and pure portrayal of a child confused by loss. Hiroshi Shimizu's contemplative images capture the loneliness and isolation of both protagonists, Michio in his inability to move on from the past, and Sonoko in her desperate attempts for him to love her as his mother. "Image of a Mother" is composed of long takes with both static and lateral tracking shots, beautifully complemented by soothing melodies. Every element of this project feels carefully crafted and polished by a master who has perfected his filmmaking, which is fitting for the final film of Shimizu. If "Image of a Mother" were better known and accessible to more viewers, it would undoubtedly be as loved and critically acclaimed as an Ozu picture.
A poignant work of love and memory, and a beautiful farewell to the magnificent career of Hiroshi Shimizu.
Michio refuses to let go of the memory of his late mother, even though everyone around him urges him to forget her, to hide her picture in a drawer, and to quickly move on and embrace his father's new wife, Sonoko, as his new mother. Michio's friends and family cannot understand why he is unable to move on, as all of them have done long ago. However, things simply aren't that easy for a boy of such a young age. It takes time, patience, and a whole lot of love for a child to get over the death of a maternal figure. Time, patience and love that Sonoko tries her hardest to provide for Michio, but to no avail.
Hiroshi Shimizu accurately and gently depicts childhood innocence, family dynamics shaken by loss, and a woman's efforts to be a good mother, to love and to be loved back. Sonoko does her best to present herself as the perfect symbol of motherhood. She spoils Michio and is extremely nice, caring and loving towards him, as an attempt to be a reflection or an image of a mother, his mother. Michio appreciates his new mother's love and even calls Emiko (Sonoko's daughter) by 'sister', but he cannot call Sonoko 'mother' nor interact with her the way a child interacts with their parent. He believes that, by accepting her gifts and calling her 'mom', he would be betraying the memory of his dead mother, forever replacing and forgetting her.
Michio doesn't mean to be rude, disrespectful or inconsiderate. He knows Sonoko loves him and he likes having her and Emiko around. But him refusing to acknowledge Sonoko as his new mother, him greeting a picture of his late mother everyday, him playing with the pigeon that she gave him for his birthday before she passed-these are Michio's ways of preserving the image of his mother. However, his attitude and the distance between him and Sonoko cause great emotional distress within the family. And the climax of "Image of a Mother" is a heartbreaking scene where Michio resorts to violence and hurts Emiko after learning that she accidentally freed his pigeon. While this chaos unfolds, Sonoko can only crouch there in fear and shame of her failure as a mother, covering her ears and shutting her eyes closed without knowing what to do.
After Michio is taken to the police station for being out at night alone looking for his pigeon, Sonoko is called to the school to speak with his teacher. She is handed a letter that he wrote explaining his complex feelings and emotions during this period of grief and change. "Image of a Mother" then offers an emotionally devastating scene where the whole family reacts to the letter in tears, while Michio reads it in a heartbreaking voice-over. This scene resembles the ending of "Yi Yi" a lot, and it is just as powerful. After all that's happened, Sonoko finds it better to stay away for a while, and leaves with Emiko.
However, in a final scene that will have you bawling your eyes out as it had mine, Michio follows Sonoko and begs her not to leave while addressing her as 'mom'. At last, he has finally acknowledged Sonoko as his mother, but not because he was forced to do so. Michio does this because he finally realizes that all of his pain was being passed on to others. In his grief, he was hurting Sonoko, Emiko and his father Sadao, who only tried to love and support him. Michio finally understands that he can have two mothers, one alive in reality, and one never forgotten in memory. For a mother is a woman who loves and cares for her child, biological or not. Sonoko's love made her Michio's mother, and he finally accepted it.
Chikage Awashima gives a fantastic performance as Sonoko, a role that represents all mothers. And Michihiro Mori reaches the same heights with a genuine and pure portrayal of a child confused by loss. Hiroshi Shimizu's contemplative images capture the loneliness and isolation of both protagonists, Michio in his inability to move on from the past, and Sonoko in her desperate attempts for him to love her as his mother. "Image of a Mother" is composed of long takes with both static and lateral tracking shots, beautifully complemented by soothing melodies. Every element of this project feels carefully crafted and polished by a master who has perfected his filmmaking, which is fitting for the final film of Shimizu. If "Image of a Mother" were better known and accessible to more viewers, it would undoubtedly be as loved and critically acclaimed as an Ozu picture.
A poignant work of love and memory, and a beautiful farewell to the magnificent career of Hiroshi Shimizu.
Echoes of existence within empty halls. The year is 2005, but the printing machine hasn't worked since it turned to the year 2000. Is that when the world came to an end? Our souls perished, yet our physical bodies remained, wandering this desolate reality, doomed to perform daily tasks in autopilot for eternity. The world is dead and allergies have become an epidemic, however, loneliness is an even bigger issue. Our soulless bodies lack any sense of self and purpose, as we drag ourselves aimlessly through life, fading in and out of existence. We have lost all perception of time and space-everything looks the same, and each day is indistinguishable from the previous and the next. As if our lifeless existence were a time loop-"Say, why doesn't anybody try to fix it? Say, why doesn't anybody try to fix it? Say, why doesn't anybody try to fix it?"-A present playing on repeat without ever getting closer to the future. Are we doomed to live in eternal solitude, spiraling down into a bottomless pit of loneliness and despair?
Barren Illusion is one of Kiyoshi Kurosawa's many frightening and obscure explorations of urban decay, disconnection, alienation and human nature. Through ominous and suffocating atmospheres, quietly intense scenes, and bizarre, enigmatic and symbolic puzzles, Kurosawa studies humanity in its most primordial form-our impulses, suppressed feelings, strange behaviors, and how we react to the unknowable and the occult. A melancholic, ghostly exercise on eeriness, uneasiness and psychological horror. This work of 'slow cinema' shares a similar style to that of filmmakers Tsai Ming-liang and Apichatpong Weerasethakul, which is a very visual and minimalist approach to storytelling, with long takes, industrial sounds instead of music, slow camera movements, and zoned-out characters silently walking around and doing random activities, revealing little to no information regarding the plot and themselves. But always with a light touch of surrealism and the sense of an impending doom about to befall the disaffected characters. This film seems to have been inspired especially by Tsai Ming-liang's The Hole, and it feels like the blueprint for Pulse, a similar film of Kurosawa's that would come only 2 years after Barren Illusion.
In Barren Illusion, we are tasked to follow around and observe the boring day-to-day lives of a man named Haru and his girlfriend Michi. Despite the chance of negative side effects, both of them decide to test a new drug that makes them immune to the allergy pandemic. But not because they don't want to wear a mask outside, the reason is likely an internal search for something different, something that breaks the cycle of their monotonous routines. In fact, Haru is so bored and disconnected from the world around him that he disappears sometimes, as if the pressure caused by the emptiness and boredom of his existence is too big a burden for him to bear, and he just... momentarily ceases to exist. Michi dreams of traveling abroad to escape her tedious office job and miserable lifestyle, but she never gets the chance. So, she throws herself off a rooftop after witnessing one of her colleagues do the same. But in the next scene, Michi is fine, as if her death were nothing but a dream. Later on, she's beaten to death by a group of thugs, but again, she appears to be unharmed.
In both cases, Michi dies, but those incidents almost seem to be erased from her existence. This appears to be one of Kiyoshi Kurosawa's dark metaphors, as Michi even tells Haru that she's dead in a certain scene. How can one die, if one was never really alive? The banality and monotony of her life have turned her into a soulless body, as good as dead. Both characters just want to disappear, to die even, so they can escape their realities and attain peace. Barren Illusion is a grim tale of ghosts wandering a barren purgatory, stuck in an agonizing present, hoping for a better future that will never come. The film's imagery is ordinary yet highly thought-provoking and hypnotic, with the retro technological objects and places evoking a strong nostalgia and longing for the late 90s and early 2000s. Barren Illusion is a masterpiece, painting existence as a punishment, a shattered reality as a waking nightmare of dissatisfaction and repetition, an apocalypse of the mundane. Metaphysical, transcendental, psychological horror. The loneliest and bleakest film in the universe.
Barren Illusion is one of Kiyoshi Kurosawa's many frightening and obscure explorations of urban decay, disconnection, alienation and human nature. Through ominous and suffocating atmospheres, quietly intense scenes, and bizarre, enigmatic and symbolic puzzles, Kurosawa studies humanity in its most primordial form-our impulses, suppressed feelings, strange behaviors, and how we react to the unknowable and the occult. A melancholic, ghostly exercise on eeriness, uneasiness and psychological horror. This work of 'slow cinema' shares a similar style to that of filmmakers Tsai Ming-liang and Apichatpong Weerasethakul, which is a very visual and minimalist approach to storytelling, with long takes, industrial sounds instead of music, slow camera movements, and zoned-out characters silently walking around and doing random activities, revealing little to no information regarding the plot and themselves. But always with a light touch of surrealism and the sense of an impending doom about to befall the disaffected characters. This film seems to have been inspired especially by Tsai Ming-liang's The Hole, and it feels like the blueprint for Pulse, a similar film of Kurosawa's that would come only 2 years after Barren Illusion.
In Barren Illusion, we are tasked to follow around and observe the boring day-to-day lives of a man named Haru and his girlfriend Michi. Despite the chance of negative side effects, both of them decide to test a new drug that makes them immune to the allergy pandemic. But not because they don't want to wear a mask outside, the reason is likely an internal search for something different, something that breaks the cycle of their monotonous routines. In fact, Haru is so bored and disconnected from the world around him that he disappears sometimes, as if the pressure caused by the emptiness and boredom of his existence is too big a burden for him to bear, and he just... momentarily ceases to exist. Michi dreams of traveling abroad to escape her tedious office job and miserable lifestyle, but she never gets the chance. So, she throws herself off a rooftop after witnessing one of her colleagues do the same. But in the next scene, Michi is fine, as if her death were nothing but a dream. Later on, she's beaten to death by a group of thugs, but again, she appears to be unharmed.
In both cases, Michi dies, but those incidents almost seem to be erased from her existence. This appears to be one of Kiyoshi Kurosawa's dark metaphors, as Michi even tells Haru that she's dead in a certain scene. How can one die, if one was never really alive? The banality and monotony of her life have turned her into a soulless body, as good as dead. Both characters just want to disappear, to die even, so they can escape their realities and attain peace. Barren Illusion is a grim tale of ghosts wandering a barren purgatory, stuck in an agonizing present, hoping for a better future that will never come. The film's imagery is ordinary yet highly thought-provoking and hypnotic, with the retro technological objects and places evoking a strong nostalgia and longing for the late 90s and early 2000s. Barren Illusion is a masterpiece, painting existence as a punishment, a shattered reality as a waking nightmare of dissatisfaction and repetition, an apocalypse of the mundane. Metaphysical, transcendental, psychological horror. The loneliest and bleakest film in the universe.
Minimalist existentialism in the form of second chances and family tragedies. A cheerful examination of human connection and how people drift apart with the passage of time. Yutaka got into a coma after being hit by a car at only 14 years old, and now, he has suddenly woken up after 10 years asleep, and he finds himself all alone in a changed world. There is no sign of his family, and the only person who comes for him is a lonely fish-farmer named Fujimori, who is an old friend of Yutaka's father. They gradually come to fill the holes in each other's lives as they spend time together and grow closer, with Fujimori acting as a father figure or older brother to Yutaka, teaching him how to be an adult and deal with his new responsibilities. Fujimori understands Yutaka's newfound loneliness because he too has been living in isolation. Yutaka's journey is one of maturing, reconciling with family, reminiscing about the past, and reconnecting with childhood friends.
Despite its deadpan tone and expressionless characters, License to Live is one of Kiyoshi Kurosawa's funnier and more intimate works. Yutaka may be a quiet character, but Kurosawa uses him as vessel to portray the difficulties of moving forward. It seems impossible to move on when you have a distant past, a shattered present and a huge gap to fill, but Yutaka's time with Fujimori helps him to rediscover himself, while Kurosawa depicts the realities of the adult world through the eyes of a 14 year old child. A tale of growing up, but only of the mind, for the body is already grown up. But Yutaka wasn't the only one to lose 10 years. His family suffered a tremendous loss that slowly broke them apart, and even the man who caused his accident lived a decade of guilt and regret, and Yutaka's return deeply affects them in the present. Kiyoshi Kurosawa's stories are always extremely impactful and heartfelt because of his unbelievable skill to portray loneliness on such a profound and humane level, and License to Live is no different.
This is a film about the meaning of life, but it doesn't try to explicitly tell you what it is, because it differs from person to person. Instead, License to Live strives to makes you have a little introspective session of your own and answer the big question yourself-"What am I living for?" Perhaps the meaning of life is following our dreams and passions, no matter how foolish they might seem. No matter how little and temporary, like building a pony ranch to bring estranged friends and family together once more. By the end of License to Live, Kiyoshi Kurosawa seems to hint at a "it was a (comatose) dream all along" plot twist, but then the real ending comes out of nowhere and hits you hard in the heart with a moment of great sadness and melancholy. The film is mostly lighthearted but it also packs a lot of meaning. It is especially funny though, with an almost cartoonish humor and dead-inside characters that the actors deliver extremely well. Koji Yakusho is amazing as a nonchalant fish-farmer, but Hidetoshi Nishijima steals the show with a simple yet complex performance as a teenager stuck in an adult body.
License to Live differs a lot from Kiyoshi Kurosawa's horror works and intense style, but at the same time, not really. In a way, this film is a work of psychological horror, but only for the character of Yutaka, whose situation is one we'll never get to fully understand. Overall, Kurosawa's craft is intoxicating even in his early days, with long and meditative takes, an immersive atmosphere, characters developed through actions instead of words, and quiet scenes and natural sounds taking precedence, eliminating the need for dialogue and music. License to Live is a unique and peaceful spin on the family tragedy trope, and again, despite its deadpan tone, it's impossible not to feel moved by the end of the story. Fujimori carries memories of Yutaka with him, the way Yutaka carried on the memory of his unbroken family with his pony farm. Even after dying or disappearing, we live on because of those who refuse to forget us.
Despite its deadpan tone and expressionless characters, License to Live is one of Kiyoshi Kurosawa's funnier and more intimate works. Yutaka may be a quiet character, but Kurosawa uses him as vessel to portray the difficulties of moving forward. It seems impossible to move on when you have a distant past, a shattered present and a huge gap to fill, but Yutaka's time with Fujimori helps him to rediscover himself, while Kurosawa depicts the realities of the adult world through the eyes of a 14 year old child. A tale of growing up, but only of the mind, for the body is already grown up. But Yutaka wasn't the only one to lose 10 years. His family suffered a tremendous loss that slowly broke them apart, and even the man who caused his accident lived a decade of guilt and regret, and Yutaka's return deeply affects them in the present. Kiyoshi Kurosawa's stories are always extremely impactful and heartfelt because of his unbelievable skill to portray loneliness on such a profound and humane level, and License to Live is no different.
This is a film about the meaning of life, but it doesn't try to explicitly tell you what it is, because it differs from person to person. Instead, License to Live strives to makes you have a little introspective session of your own and answer the big question yourself-"What am I living for?" Perhaps the meaning of life is following our dreams and passions, no matter how foolish they might seem. No matter how little and temporary, like building a pony ranch to bring estranged friends and family together once more. By the end of License to Live, Kiyoshi Kurosawa seems to hint at a "it was a (comatose) dream all along" plot twist, but then the real ending comes out of nowhere and hits you hard in the heart with a moment of great sadness and melancholy. The film is mostly lighthearted but it also packs a lot of meaning. It is especially funny though, with an almost cartoonish humor and dead-inside characters that the actors deliver extremely well. Koji Yakusho is amazing as a nonchalant fish-farmer, but Hidetoshi Nishijima steals the show with a simple yet complex performance as a teenager stuck in an adult body.
License to Live differs a lot from Kiyoshi Kurosawa's horror works and intense style, but at the same time, not really. In a way, this film is a work of psychological horror, but only for the character of Yutaka, whose situation is one we'll never get to fully understand. Overall, Kurosawa's craft is intoxicating even in his early days, with long and meditative takes, an immersive atmosphere, characters developed through actions instead of words, and quiet scenes and natural sounds taking precedence, eliminating the need for dialogue and music. License to Live is a unique and peaceful spin on the family tragedy trope, and again, despite its deadpan tone, it's impossible not to feel moved by the end of the story. Fujimori carries memories of Yutaka with him, the way Yutaka carried on the memory of his unbroken family with his pony farm. Even after dying or disappearing, we live on because of those who refuse to forget us.