2008 ‘歩いても 歩いても’ Directed by Hirokazu Kore-eda
Twelve years after their beloved eldest son, Junpei, drowned while saving a stranger's life, Kyohei and Toshiko welcome their surviving children home for a family reunion. Younger son Ryota still feels that his parents resent that he isn't the one who died; his new wife, Yukari, is awkwardly meeting the rest of the family for the first time. Daughter Chinami strains to fill the uncomfortable pauses with forced cheer.
歩いても、歩いても, 横山家之味, 橫山家之味, Still Walking (Caminando), Even If You Walk and Walk, Aruitemo aruitemo, 步履不停, Gelbe Schmetterlinge, 걸어도 걸어도, Seguindo em Frente, Andando, На гости, Μια Μέρα του Καλοκαιριού, ממשיכים ללכת, Sétáló, Aruitemo Aruitemo, Ciągle na chodzie, Пешком-пешком, Bitmeyen Yürüyüş, Cây Đời Xanh Tươi
Japan
USA
NetherlandsAL
South KoreaALL
Greece
PortugalM/12
Germany6
NetherlandsAL
NetherlandsAL
Germany
Greece
Japan
Netherlands
Portugal
South Korea
USA
In Still Walking, people don't change; their familial relationships won't change, or at least in any dramatic, fundamental sense. Avoidance always overcomes confrontation. As for communication, whether it's interpreted through coded words or physical action, silence will more than likely prevail. No closure is offered; resentments are left unvented, problems remain unsolved, but they are collectively acknowledged, and even understood by these characters. Kore-eda is so good at conveying affection through the minutiae of delicate gestures, expressions, and awkward interactions that he makes me long for a day to go back to my sweet home. I'm always like that. I'm always a little late.
I needed this.
Aside from Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Hirokazu Kore-eda is perhaps the only director whose films can completely put me at ease. For two hours, the world slows down and I am allowed to silently communicate with the wealth of subtleties and softly spoken truths a Kore-eda picture holds. Still Walking is no different. It's serene, patient and quiet. In saying these things, I am of course tiptoeing around the most obvious descriptor of all, which is "delicate." Delicacy is a quality that graces all of Kore-eda's work, but there's something different here. There's a void at the center of the film- a massive hole left by the early departure of a loved one. We see it in shots of…
Still Walking to me almost feels like Hirokazu Kore-eda's Tokyo Story tribute, with enough personal trademarks, modernized elements, and as much heart and soul as the classic. It's 2 hours of minimal, extremely personal retelling of family issues through the everyday, mundane existence. Without a sensational story a la Nobody Knows or The Shoplifters, this is arguably Kore-eda's best and most heartfelt work so far.
Still Walking details a middle-aged man's reluctant visit to his parents, when he and his father doesn't have the best relationship in the world. Based on Kore-eda's own life story, Still Walking shares some of the most common types of family dramas you've seen in Japanese cinema, yet Kore-eda made the whole thing transfixing, with…
beautifully contained family drama that, by limiting itself to the unspoken affection and resentments that bleed into quiet interactions and awkward conversations, wonderfully observes how even when typical traditions erode knew ones are created as details of loved ones accumulate.
"Children don't necessarily grow up the way you want them to."
Great expectations
Junpei died 12 years ago saving a young boy, the structural void at the heart of the narrative, the gravitational pull of which generates the force of the plot, but for me the heart of the film lies with the parallels between Ryota, Junpei's younger brother, and Yoshio, the boy Junpei died saving. At the most immediate level, they're both struggling to live their lives in the wake of this loss: Ryota is between jobs in art restoration, and Yoshio doesn't seem to have the willpower to invest himself in anything. But at a deeper level, not only do they now live with survivor's guilt, they also…
Kore-eda's films are like poetry to me, saying so much through life’s simplest of moments. Life is in the smallest of details, whether it be the slowly dying flower in a cup of water on the dinner table or the broken tiles in the bathroom... It’s all bursting with life, with memories and with times to come. Everything has a story to tell and Kore-eda gives us those stories.
I genuinely don’t know a better director than Kore-eda when it comes to presenting people and their lives on film. The way his characters interact with each other and how we can see and feel what they’re feeling through the smallest of gestures or utterances of dialogue is so real and…
So after the majesty that is Like Father, Like Son, I have caught the Kore-eda bug it seems, and happily so has my wife. So as we decided on our next excursion into the heart and soul of Japanese family life, Still Walking seemed like the appropriate next choice. The plot reads like Ozu's Tokyo Story and who better to bring a similar styled familial melodrama into the modern setting than Kore-eda.
Whilst on a surface level the plot seems well trodden; A family reunites every year to commemorate the death of the eldest son, which through traditions, age and generational divide, illuminates tensions and observations that most people on planet earth can relate to is some form or another.…
Five minutes after we started watching this film, my partner said "This is a live-action Hayao Miyazaki movie." He was right, too. While in places, the story gets darker and more emotionally fraught than Miyazaki (especially in the best scene, where a mother speaks frankly and chillingly about her opinion of the "useless" boy her oldest son died while rescuing), a great deal of the film feels like it could be translated into Ghibli animation without missing a beat. Technically, it's one of those nearly-single-set family dramas with a bunch of people coming together for a shared holiday and living out their familiar old dramas, with a few new catharses: the kind of story that usually feels like a stage…
Do you know that feeling of calm that washes over you during a cloudy Sunday afternoon? This move is the incarnation of that feeling. It is what nostalgia and solace would look like. It is silent, sincere, honest and nuanced. Still Walking proves that drama doesn’t always have to be a grief-stricken heavy scene to leave a lasting detrimental effect. Having experienced personal loss isn’t a requirement for you to relate to this realistic family portrait that gently makes you forget you are watching a movie, but simply a bystander looking in on a family dealing with loss.
Sinegang weekly pick #2 by Hannah
I have always believed that butterflies are our deceased relatives paying us a visit.
"Even when they die, people don't really go away."
At my grandma’s funeral, a butterfly flew by. My mom jokingly said it was my grandma, checking up on us. It was 11 years ago. And on my birthdays for 11 years, a butterfly always stays in my room. Even though it’s a wild superstition, I’d like to think it’s my grandma who still doesn’t forget my birthday.
People like to hold on to something to keep them afloat. A superstition, a grudge, a relationship, a tradition, a piece of clothing, a piece of paper, a profession, or even a person. These things are supposed to make…
