Synopsis
A family gathers together for a commemorative ritual whose nature only gradually becomes clear.
A family gathers together for a commemorative ritual whose nature only gradually becomes clear.
歩いても、歩いても, 横山家之味, Still Walking (Caminando), Even If You Walk and Walk, Aruitemo aruitemo, 步履不停, Gelbe Schmetterlinge, 걸어도 걸어도, Seguindo em Frente, Andando, Bước Mãi, Bước Mãi, Μια Μέρα του Καλοκαιριού, ממשיכים ללכת, Aruitemo Aruitemo, Csak sétálok, Bitmeyen Yürüyüş, На гости, Ciągle na chodzie, 橫山家之味, Пешком-пешком, Cây Đời Xanh Tươi, Still Walking - Camminando in un giorno d'estate, ფეხდაფეხ
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.
This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.
The camera only moves in 2 scenes (that I remember) and the choice to move the camera in only those scenes is literally the most beautiful thing ever. The way Kore-eda captures space and location and uses that to tell the connection people have with each other cannot be replicated. Don't know how something so simple could feel like nothing I've ever seen before (besides Shoplifters obviously.) Last 10 minutes felt like I got hit by a bus!
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…
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 new ones are created as details of loved ones accumulate.
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…
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…
Fuck FUCK fuuuuuuuuuuuck FUCK FUCK FUCK
Tense without emphasis. Quietly damaging but also warm and inviting. Self guilt brought on with reminders of why you push yourself away in the first place. Entirely whole, happening to us all in so many different ways.
reentering a family home is like getting pulled back into the orbit of everything that exists there, where our outside lives and everything we built on our own have to find a way to fit in that space. but reentering that home also ignites something new that we carry with us back into the world. as much as we try to separate ourselves, we always leave with these leftovers.
kore-eda is so forgiving in the way he shows families, highlighting the flaws and conflicts that arise when you all gather, but still choosing to show up for each other anyway. it is a simple truth, but it contains everything.
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…