A Distant Cry from Spring

This film has been a favorite of mine since I first saw it over 30 years ago. It is an ordinary love story told in such beautiful narrative. Both leads are excellent especially the female lead. I think she and Setsure Hara are the two actresses that best embodied the Japaneae women postwar.

Recently quite a few films by the great Yoji Yamada has been released on blu Rays, including yellow Hankerchief and a distant cry from the mountain. I also want. To recommend another film coscripted by Yamada, Castle of Sand, recently restored and released on blu ray. These films are so much different from the Hollywood blockbusters and offer some have satisfaction after each viewing. Remarkable.

The very slow pace challenged me (as sometimes happens when I'm not in the ideal mood for a slower film), but it's subtle in a way that largely works, has beautiful visuals, and Chieko Baisho is as good as always.

I can see why her and Yoji Yamada collaborated dozens of times over so many decades, because her acting and his direction always seems to work so well together.

It's also always fun to see Kiyoshi Atsumi show up in a more serious Yamada film and bring a small amount of levity to a scene or two. As is the case with Yoji Yamada, A Distant Cry from Spring is worth watching because it's by the filmmaker alone; his stuff is always worthwhile.

I first saw this film at the Hong Kong International Film Festival in 1981 and have often looked for it since (without any luck). Of the 50 films I saw in those 16 days (including masterpieces by Angelopoulos, and Syberberg's Hitler, A Film From Germany), Yamada's simple story turned out to be my favorite. When it recently turned up in a 5-disk Yoji Yamada box set, I immediately ordered it. Well, the disk is very poor quality, a murky transfer with the widescreen compositions butchered by a truly wretched pan-and-scan job -- and yet the quality of the film still manages to shine through.

On its surface, there's nothing particularly remarkable about A Distant Cry From Spring. A widow struggles to maintain a small farm in a remote area of Hokkaido, fighting the elements and raising her young son. One brutally stormy night, a stranger appears at the door looking for shelter. Though wary, the widow offers him her hospitality. He leaves, but then returns in the spring and asks for work, desiring only room and board in return. What follows is the depiction of a slowly developing emotional bond set against a beautifully observed portrait of daily life on the farm, an endless round of backbreaking chores which constantly threaten to overwhelm the lonely woman.

There is nothing terribly surprising in the revelations which eventually emerge about the characters, but they are so finely drawn and their emotional lives resonate with such authenticity, that only a cold-blooded viewer could fail to be moved by the film's resolution.

Yamada is a master of emotional nuance and a brilliant observer of the small details of ordinary lives, which he obviously holds in some kind of awe, and in which he finds a kind of magic. He makes you feel for the characters without ever stooping to sentimentality or easy manipulation. His work deserves to be more widely known, and he certainly deserves better treatment from DVD distributors.

This film is basically a remake of the famous american western "Shane" (1953) but for some mysterious reasons all connections between these tho films are ignored or hushed up.

Both films feature a stranger in a rural "western" setting who ends up at a families house and starts to bond with them (especially the son) and working for them while trying to protect his secret.

Now this is far worse than the original as is almost always the case when "remaking" something that was already great.

There are barely any (beautiful) shots of the nature or the countryside in this film. The son is raised by a very argumentative, b*tchy single-mom, so the original main motif of male friendship and brotherhood between the stranger and the father are non-existent.

Having a really uncharismatic woman as a mc in a film that tries to copy american western movies is definitely such a great decision that I must draw my head.

If you don't believe me, just watch Shane by the love of god and you'll see.

I have first seen this movie in the 80s. I was only a child and the movie was on Romanian television, who at that time only transmitted in black & white. Funny how I still remembered the opening scene with the stranger arriving at an isolated farm during a storm. I found the movie now almost by chance. I heard that Ken Takakura died last year and I was very sad to hear it, I always liked his stoic acting. I searched IMDb for his movies and found this one among others. I love the movie. I have seen others with better plot, better directing, maybe better actors ... maybe. But there is something so authentic, so simple and yet so deep about this movie that I just love it. By the way, the last scene is incredible. One of the all-time classics, in my opinion. If you can get the movie don't miss it.