family matters
by Douglas Messerli
Hirokazu Kore-eda (screenplay, based on Akimi
Yoshida’s Umimachi Diary, and
director)海街diary (Our Little Sister) / 2015, USA 2016
Still acting much as the mother to the
group, Sachi works as a nurse; Yoshino works in a bank; and Chika in a sports
goods store. Like any family unit, they often argue over important and
unimportant matters, but generally, despite their personality differences, they
get on quite wonderfully.
As the film begins, they hear that their
father, who had moved far away with yet a third woman, has died, and when they
attend the funeral they discover that their father has had yet another
daughter, Suzu (Suzu Hirose), now 14 years of age. At the funeral it becomes
apparent that the stepmother is a selfish woman, and that Suzu has been the
true nurse to her father during his long illness. For Sachi it seems, perhaps,
that their half-sister may not even be wanted by the step-mother, who has a
younger son from her previous relationship. In what almost seems like a whimsical
decision, Sachi and her two sisters invite the young girl to come live with
them.
It helps, of course, that this young girl has an infectious smile, is a
good soccer player, and seems generally well-adjusted, allowing her to fit into
family and school life equally. But, in a sense, that’s beside the point. For
Kore-eda’s film is not about “events” as much as it is about a sort of
Chekov-like spirit, an acceptance of what life offers and a determination of
the survivors to make the best of it they can. This theme is repeated again and
again throughout the film as Sachi and her mother make up over a jar of plum
wine, as Yoshino helps a restaurateur friend to write a will before she dies,
and Sachi accepts a position in the intensive care unit of the hospital, where
it becomes her job to help people to die.
Through Suzu, Chika even gets the opportunity to get to know something
about the father she can hardly remember. If their father has been worthless,
they conclude, at least he did one thing that was meaningful, bringing a little
sister into their lives.
Like the great Japanese director Yasujirō Ozu, this director has long
focused his films on family life, subtly exploring how outsiders alter or help
to break-down that important unit. For many looser-knit Americans, the seeming
uneventfulness of Kore-eda’s film may suggest that, even if emotionally rich,
the film is somewhat meaningless.
But that would be to misunderstand what we are actually being shown in
this work. Tensions and small rifts
temporarily set them each adrift; they simply do not advertise those hurts the
way strangers or outsiders would. Family members may even fight, but as a unit
they must equally forgive and forget. Time and again these sisters point out
the traits of one another, comparing and linking them to the new sister.
Knowing that family is all they truly have, that it is a way of embracing what
they do not quite know, and a way to include that world outside. Little acts—cooking,
gardening, dressing, eating, and even praying—become major events in such a
closed world, yet it is these seeming non-events that help to make a family
cohere and survive. And Kore-eda rightfully celebrates them as something more
than insignificant moments. This is a film that takes a patient gaze—in its ebb
and flow, the movie might have come to an end at several junctures before it
finally does—and a viewer that can transcend his or her own cultural
perspectives.
Los Angeles, July 11, 2016 | Reprinted
from World Cinema Review.
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