Yûyake-gumo

Shinji Tanaka's family is poor. They run a fish shop in a side street in a poor section of Tokyo. The young man has dreams of becoming a sailor, and he looks through his binoculars at the harbor and the occasional young woman. But his father falls ill and his family and friends start to fall away. He has to grow up fast.

Keisuke Kinoshita's film of hard times for young people is not among his great pictures, but it is heartfelt. Although the protagonist is Tanaka, like many of his movies, the glue that holds it together is close to the center, but not in it. Yûko Mochizuki as Tanaka's mother is loving, kind, and aware of everything that is going on, despite her soft insistence that everything is fine. The veneer cracks only a couple of times, but she underplays the scenes in such a deft fashion that she is the warmest character in all of Kinoshita's cynical post-war movies.

I watched Farewell to Dream soon after watching Snow Flurry. As beautiful and aspiring as Snow Flurry is, I was not fully convinced by the performances of its cast. However, Farewell To Dream hits the mark. Not only the tone, but the pacing, editing, the story line, and on the mark performances make this film a poignant and classic iteration of the Kinoshita style. While Keisuke Kinoshita has directed a number of films considered more "Classic": 24 Eyes, and Ballad of Narayama, in my view some of his lesser appreciated (?, accessible?) films such as Thus Another Day and Farewell to Dream represent and attain a level of emotional authenticity in Cinema often found missing in even the most Classic, High Art, Films of the "Golden Age" of Japanese Cinema.

The Japanese seem to specialize in movies about poor families struggling to keep from sliding further into poverty. I know there must be some American movies like that (although I can't think of any right off the top of my head) but in Japan they appear to be a genre within themselves. Mikio Naruse was a mater of the genre but here we have a movie by Keisuke Kinoshita. Kinoshita was known for trying out as many genres as he could, and here it is like he decided to see if he could out-Naruse Naruse. And I have to say he does a pretty good job. The trick is to show the hardships endured by the characters without overwhelming the viewer. Kinoshita gets the tone right in his movie: there are plenty of misfortunes, but the there is never any sentimentality or pathos. I know many people would be bored stiff or depressed by a movie like this, but I find it refreshing to see a movie about real people instead of Hollywood caricatures and getting caught up in their ups and downs. Recommended for fans of old Japanese movies (particularly those made by Naruse) or anyone else interested in movies off the beaten path.