is a 2008 Japanese film edited, written, and directed by
Hirokazu Kore-eda
is a Japanese film director, producer, screenwriter, and editor. He began his career in television and has since directed more than a dozen feature films, including '' Nobody Knows'' (2004), '' Still Walking'' (2008), and '' After the Storm'' ( ...
. The film is a portrait of a family over roughly 24 hours as they commemorate the death of the eldest son. The film was widely praised by critics and won the Golden Astor for Best Film at the 2008
Mar del Plata International Film Festival
The Mar del Plata International Film Festival ( es, Festival Internacional de Cine de Mar del Plata) is an international film festival that takes place every November in the city of Mar del Plata, Argentina. It is the only competitive feature fest ...
.
Plot
The Yokoyama family come together every year to commemorate the death of the eldest son, Junpei, who accidentally drowned 12 years ago while saving the life of a boy. His father Kyohei, a retired doctor, and mother Toshiko are joined by their surviving son Ryota, who has recently married a widow (Yukari) with a young son (Atsushi), and their daughter Chinami, her husband and their children. Ryota resents knowing that Junpei was the favorite son, whose belongings are still left untouched by Toshiko, and that his parents attribute positive memories of him to Junpei; a bitter Kyohei, who is still mourning his son, has always been disappointed that Ryota went into art restoration instead of becoming a doctor and taking over the family business like Junpei. Meanwhile, Chinami pushes the idea of moving her family in with her ageing parents in order to take care of them.
Kyohei and Toshiko are initially distant and cold to Yukari, openly believing it to be bad luck for Ryota to marry a widow, but eventually warm up to her and the shy Atsushi due to Yukari's kindness and push to bond. The family spends the day reminiscing and discussing their personal lives and careers, though Ryota only privately reveals to Yukari that he is struggling to find gainful employment in his field of art restoration. Ryota tries to confront his father after he catches Kyohei advising Atsushi to go into medicine, but Kyohei rebuffs his attempts. In the evening, they are visited by Yoshio, the boy Junpei died rescuing 12 years ago. The meeting is strained and uncomfortable; most of the family is angry and disappointed that Yoshio, now 25, is fat, lazy, and aimless, and believe that he should have died instead of Junpei. Only Ryota, who empathizes with feeling inferior to Junpei, defends him, and implores Toshiko to stop inviting him and making him feel guilty over Junpei's death. Toshiko refuses, telling him that Junpei's death would be too much to bear without having someone to blame for it, and that being reminded of the death once a year is the least Yoshio can do.
Chinami and her family depart for home, and the rest of the family gather for dinner. Yukari asks questions about Toshiko and Kyohei's marriage, which reveals years of mutual resentment and disappointment, though the couple nevertheless remains together. Toshiko reveals the couple's personal romantic song, ''Blue Light Yokohama'' by
Ayumi Ishida, which Kyohei was unaware of. Toshiko explains that one night, she heard Kyohei singing the song from another woman's house, and Toshiko then purchased a record of the song's album and would listen to it in private. At night, a butterfly gets into the house and lands on Junpei's picture; Toshiko believes it is Junpei, and though Ryota is too cynical to agree, he captures and releases the butterfly outside. Toshiko advises Ryota to have a child with Yukari as soon as possible so that it will be harder for them to divorce. During the night, the Yokoyamas' neighbor makes an emergency call due to chest pains, and Kyohei, distressed, advises her to call an ambulance and apologizes for not being of more help before watching her be taken away to the same hospital that had put his family clinic out of business.
Ryota, Yukari, and Atsushi leave in the morning. Though Kyohei and Toshiko look forward to seeing them for New Year's, Ryota and Yukari privately agree to renege on the meeting. As they drive away, Ryota explains in a voiceover that Kyohei died a few years later, with Toshiko passing away shortly after, without Chinami moving in or Ryota having fulfilled the promises he made to them earlier during the reunion. The film ends with Ryota's family – now including a young daughter – tending to the Yokoyama family graves, with Ryota continuing the same rituals and sayings that he'd learnt from his mother.
Cast
*
Hiroshi Abe as Ryota Yokoyama
*
Yui Natsukawa
is a Japanese actress. She co-starred with Hiroshi Abe in the 2006 Japanese drama Kekkon Dekinai Otoko and in Hirokazu Kore-eda's 2008 film '' Still Walking''.
Filmography Film
* ''Sora ga Konnani Aoi Wake ga Nai'' (1993) - Kaoru Aoki
* ''Yoru ...
as Yukari Yokoyama
*
You
In Modern English, ''you'' is the second-person pronoun. It is grammatically plural, and was historically used only for the dative case, but in most modern dialects is used for all cases and numbers.
History
''You'' comes from the Proto- ...
as Chinami Kataoka
*
Kazuya Takahashi as Nobuo Kataoka
*Shohei Tanaka as Atsushi Yokoyama
*
Susumu Terajima
is a Japanese actor. Though he has played a wide range of characters, he is perhaps best known for his portrayal of ''yakuza'' figures, most notably in the films of Takeshi Kitano.
Terajima made his acting debut in 1986's ''A Homansu''. He ...
as Sushi deliverer
*
Kirin Kiki
(15 January 1943 – 15 September 2018) was a Japanese actress for Japanese cinema and television.
Biography
Kiki was born on January 15, 1943, in Kanda, Tokyo. Her father was a master of the ''biwa'' lute and a former police officer. Her mother ...
as Toshiko Yokoyama
*
Yoshio Harada
was a Japanese actor best known for playing rebels in a career that spanned six decades.
Career
Born in Tokyo, Harada joined the Haiyuza Theatre Company in 1966 and made his television debut in 1967 with "Tenka no seinen" and his film debut in ...
as Kyohei Yokoyama
Production
In an interview with Kore-eda included in the Blu-Ray release of the movie (through Netflix and possibly elsewhere), the director candidly discussed how much – but not all – of the movie was motivated by memories of his own childhood and the eventual death of his mother. On the same disk, a short "making of" supplement showed how many of the film's scenes were brought to life from the script during rehearsals or invented outright while shooting on location in what appeared to be the Yokohama area south of Tokyo.
Reception
''Still Walking'' received wide acclaim from film critics. Review aggregator
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...
reports a
perfect approval rating of based on reviews, with a
weighted average
The weighted arithmetic mean is similar to an ordinary arithmetic mean (the most common type of average), except that instead of each of the data points contributing equally to the final average, some data points contribute more than others. The ...
of . The site's consensus reads: "Hirokazu Kore-eda's film may seem modest at first, but this family drama casts a delicate, entrancing spell".
Metacritic
Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...
ranked the film at 89%, which was based on 21 reviews. In a ''
Chicago Sun-Times
The ''Chicago Sun-Times'' is a daily newspaper published in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Since 2022, it is the flagship paper of Chicago Public Media, and has the second largest circulation among Chicago newspapers, after the ''Chicago T ...
'' review,
Roger Ebert
Roger Joseph Ebert (; June 18, 1942 – April 4, 2013) was an American film critic, film historian, journalist, screenwriter, and author. He was a film critic for the ''Chicago Sun-Times'' from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, Ebert beca ...
gave the work four stars and touted that Kore-eda is an heir of
Yasujirō Ozu
was a Japanese film director and screenwriter. He began his career during the era of silent films, and his last films were made in colour in the early 1960s. Ozu first made a number of short comedies, before turning to more serious themes in t ...
. Trevor Johnston of ''
Sight & Sound
''Sight and Sound'' (also spelled ''Sight & Sound'') is a British monthly film magazine published by the British Film Institute (BFI). It conducts the well-known, once-a-decade ''Sight and Sound'' Poll of the Greatest Films of All Time, ongoing ...
'' wrote that "however one positions ''Still Walking'' in the firmament of Japan's cinematic achievements, one thing is sure: it belongs up there with the masters." The film won the
Asian Film Award for Best Director
Asian Film Award for Best Director has been awarded annually since 2007 by the Hong Kong International Film Festival Society.
Winners and nominees
2000s
2010s
2020s
References
External links
Official site
{{Asian Film Awards
Asian ...
, and was nominated for the
Grand Prix
Grand Prix ( , meaning ''Grand Prize''; plural Grands Prix), is a name sometimes used for competitions or sport events, alluding to the winner receiving a prize, trophy or honour
Grand Prix or grand prix may refer to:
Arts and entertainment ...
of the
Belgian Syndicate of Cinema Critics
The Belgian Film Critics Association (french: Union de la critique de cinéma, UCC) is an organization of film critics from publications based in Brussels, Belgium.
History
The Belgian Film Critics Association was founded in the early 1950s in Br ...
. It was also the choice of Joshua Rothkopf in
IndieWire
IndieWire (sometimes stylized as indieWIRE or Indiewire) is a film industry and review website that was established in 1996. The site's focus was predominantly independent film, although its coverage has grown to "to include all aspects of Hollyw ...
's 2018 list of the best Japanese films of the 21st century.
See also
*
List of films with a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, a film has a rating of 100% if each professional review recorded by the website is assessed as positive rather than negative. The percentage is based on the film's reviews aggregated by the webs ...
, a film review aggregator website
References
External links
Official site*
*
*''Still Walking: A Death in the Family'' an essay by Dennis Lim at the
Criterion Collection
The Criterion Collection, Inc. (or simply Criterion) is an American home-video distribution company that focuses on licensing, restoring and distributing "important classic and contemporary films." Criterion serves film and media scholars, cinep ...
{{Hirokazu Kore-eda
2008 films
Films directed by Hirokazu Kore-eda
2000s Japanese-language films
Japanese drama films
Films set in Japan
Films about dysfunctional families
Films about families
Films about grieving
2008 drama films
2000s Japanese films