Twenty-Four Eyes

25 years ago I made up my mind I would move to Japan. So I wrote to people in Japan who had lived there for over thirty years, and asked them what would be the #1 movie I should watch that encapsulated the spirit of the Japanese.

They all suggested "24 Eyes".

Now, after having lived in a strictly Japanese environment for five years, and having seen well over thirty Japanese movies, not to mention over a thousand hours of TV shows and animae, it is still the #1 to me.

By today's standards it will seem extremely "G" rated, a little too slow and a bit too long. But for those who want to really understand people, and where they are coming from, I can't think of a better movie to recommend. I wish every culture, particularly those that may be going extinct, would use this movie as a guideline to tell their story.

Mostly unknown and frequently dismissed in the West, this film is often considered by the Japanese to be one of their very best films, if not their best. I concur with the Japanese. I can understand the issues people have with it, namely that it is overly sentimental, but I think it mostly earns the tears that are shed over it. It's a film in the classic teacher genre, like Goodbye Mr. Chips. Hideko Takamine plays Hisako Oishi, a young woman who begins the movie as a first grade teacher on a small island in 1928. Being a small population, she ends up staying with the same students for several years. The film ends in the 1950s, so you kind of know what will probably happen to her male students, and what she and her female students will have to experience. It may be somewhat predictable, but it's incredibly heartbreaking. The film is beautifully made, and filled with Japanese folk songs (strangely, the score of the film is made up of a bunch of Western music, including "Bonnie Annie Laurie" and "There's No Place Like Home"; it's definitely a flaw). Takamine, who starred in several Mikio Naruse films around the same time, is exceptional.

For English speaking people, there are not many movies available on DVD starring Hideko Takamine. This is one, and it is a masterpiece. Ms. Takamine plays a schoolteacher in a small Inland Sea village in Japan. The movie's time line is twenty years, from 1928 to 1948. These turbulent times affect the students she teaches, some of whom went off to war. There are many tears in this film, from the children and Takamine's character. The fact that "Auld Lang Syne" is used at times for background music heightens the feelings of loss & sadness, which does make up some of the story. This is somewhat of an anti-war film, but only as it affects the children and the teacher. Ms. Takamine is luminous in this role, as she is in every movie I've ever seen her in. The fact that the director Kinoshita Keisuke also directed her in "Carmen Comes Home" (the first ever Japanese film in color), a film light years away from this one, shows off their versatility in their craft. The only complaint I have is small, that the subtitles are somewhat annoying, since they are sometimes out of sync. However, a great movie is a great movie. This film won the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film. It is a richly deserved honor.

People who view this film would do well to consider the sentiment of post-war Japan in the mid-50s, when the future was still uncertain and the vast devastation and shame caused by the war were prevalent in the mindset of its citizens.

The timing for this film's release was significant, because perhaps for the first time, it permitted the people of Japan to cry unabashedly for themselves, far removed from any political statement so frequent in Shochiku films such as with many of Kurosawa's classics. Movies at the time tended to have positive, uplifting themes that motivated the populous to help rebuild the country into a modern democratic nation. You can thank Douglas MacArthur for that.

The post-war generation was now almost 10 years old, and in the Japanese psyche was the need for justification for its darkest period in history.

This film served as a reminder of the horrors of war, not from the battlefields, but from the emotional scars left on its children who lived and died during it.

Hideko Takamine brilliantly played the role of a school teacher on a typical remote island community in south Japan during an increasingly militarist government. As was customary at the time, the same teacher saw to their students' education from primary to high school, forming a lifetime bond.

Director Keisuke Kinoshita's camera work is nothing less than genius, beautifully portraying the transitions of seasons from year to year. The water, sand, and dust textures are so distinct that you almost forget that it was filmed in black and white.

The character closeups are never exaggerated and the 12 children actors (hence "24 Eyes") do an outstanding job portraying how they end up sacrificing their childhood dreams due to poverty and for national duty.

Of symbolic note is the appearance of the Island bus, which is seen at first with Japanese kanji characters painted on the side. Later in the film, it's written in English as "Shima Bus", signifying how modernization has reached the island after the war.

From cast, location and cinematography, Nijushi no Hitomi is a masterpiece of emotional storytelling.

Nearly everyone who rated this film gave it 10/10, and it's easy to see why. This is a wonderful and bittersweet story about a teacher and her first twelve students, the "24 eyes" of the title, on a fairly remote island community. The story sweeps over about 20 years, from the students in the first grade, then the sixth, then as later teenagers, then four years later. The story begins in the late 1920s, and thus spans a turbulent time in Japanese history, which of course impacts greatly on the characters, even on a fairly isolated island.

Hideko Takamine is perhaps my favourite Japanese actress. This luminous and loveable women with the dazzling smile is a joy to behold and, playing the object of much affection from the children (though only sometimes from the adults), creates a wonderful feeling. Man, I wish I'd had her as a teacher in lower primary school.

There's a strong sense of community in this story, which is one of its strong points, but it is not always a positive thing for the characters. The older women gossip, of course, about the 'modern' new teacher, because she rides a bike and wears western clothes.

The director expertly presses all the emotional buttons of the audience. There are some people who detest this sort of thing, but I'm a sucker for it. In the hands of an expert director, and for the purposes of entertainment, there's nothing wrong with being taken on a emotional roller-coaster ride. There are some high points and many sad events in the story, which moves along at a pace which is sometimes leisurely but never dull.

This film is not free of faults. Aside from the very overt emotional manipulation, there are several tunes which are vastly overused. For instance, "auld lang syne" is played at least ten times.

Also, and most surprisingly, Hideko's range is limited. Despite two and a half hours, together with Hideko being the undisputed star, she shows only three expressions during the entire proceedings. Comparison to the superb HAPPINESS FOR US ALONE shows this clearly. In HFUA, Hideko plays a deaf-mute and uses her wonderfully expressive face to full effect.

But these are minor points, and no reason to mark it down from a perfect score. This is a must-see for anyone who loves film.