Maborosi

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Krakatoa S @KrakatoaSkywalker Jan 15 A meditation on grief and unanswerable loss. Shot with austere beauty through long static takes and minimal dialogue, every frame is composed with painterly precision. Koreeda's restraint is profound. He trusts silence, trusts stillness, trusts the viewer to sit with ambiguity. The film refuses easy answers, instead offering an honest acknowledgment that some questions remain forever unanswerable. The pacing demands patience but rewards it with devastating beauty. This is cinema at its most essential - stripped down to light, shadow, and the weight of what cannot be spoken. Like the phantasmic light of its title, the film itself becomes something luminous and mysterious, impossible to fully grasp but impossible to forget. I believe this is not only Koreeda's best movie, but the best movie ever made, just because it's impossible to make a greater movie. It's perfect on every level imaginable. An absolute gem, and I would sacrifice my left kidney to see on 35mm in a cinema. See more Stephen C @bob25009 Jul 1 Success in 1 hour and 49 minutes. See more Kevin L @Lakeman May 18 A lovely, quiet meditation on grief and questions with no apparent answers. Yumiko suffers a tragic loss and appears to move on. She has a family, her beloved neighbors, and a sense of peace about her. But a visit to a place from her past reveals she still grieves her loss and cannot reconcile the reasoning behind it. And she is has grief from another great loss that is visited upon her in her dreams. Kore-eda's first film after being known more for documentary work is an impressive debut as a dramatic film director. The camera is kept at a distance throughout most of the movie. Often it is far removed from the characters. This is done to create a greater sense of emotional expression that doesn't depend on using close-ups of crying faces to express the character's feelings. There's great respect for his characters as they reflect the lives of actual people who must find their reasons and purpose for living each day. 3.4 stars See more Kathy D 12/03/2023 Beautiful cinematography, but extremely slow with many long shots that seemed to go on and on. Many reviews say the main character was happy and in love with her 2nd husband, but I don't agree. She cared for that man, but was not in love with him, and not reconciled with her 1st first husband's suicide (if it was such) even at the end of the film. See more acsdoug D @acsdoug 09/09/2023 Promising premise, but nothing really happens, not even any real drama. It's just a series of subdued and at times bleak set pieces that don't really go anywhere. See more Alvise F 05/22/2022 The delicacy with which Kore-eda approaches the theme of mourning is masterful. The depth that "Maboroshi" reaches with its natural simplicity is an exemplary proof of the talent and sensitivity of an author who from then on will be considered "the modern Ozu". From Ozu, in fact, he inherits the de-dramatization structure and the narrative ellipsis; but Kore-eda is also influenced by the approach to cinema of the Taiwanese Nouvelle Vague, particularly Hou Hsiao-hsien's work and the aesthetics of its intimacy. The protagonists move in the surrounding environment with a light and cautious step, as if suspended in the void, creating a subdued and melancholy ethereal world. The very few close-ups help to keep a discreet and gentle look on the characters who wander in a time and a space that seem to be the border between life and death. A parable about the frailty of time, which is realized, for example, in the allegorical figure of an alarm clock and a light bulb on a table, which is a perfect example of "mono no aware" (物の哀れ), the Japanese aesthetics that enhances the "pathos of things", or rather, the "empathy toward things". The dignified suffering is a muffled scream lost on the open sea. See more Read all reviews

Maborosi

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