Muddy River is in many ways an excellent film. It has an earthy, empathetic, and unfiltered connection to the human struggles of post-war Japan. In an establishing scene, a child sings the type of obscene ditty that we know kids have always sung (here I'll call it "Grandpa poo"). Physical wounds are healed for some, psychological ones clearly remain. Later in the movie when a newspaper headline announces, "The post-war period" is over, the noodle shop proprietor's face reveals a deep reluctance to move on from this grief.
The overarching storyline of Muddy River concerns two families on either side of a muddy river on the outskirts of Osaka. A noodle shop owner, his wife and their child who all live on the premises, and a prostitute and her two children who arrive in a houseboat on the other side. The children from both sides hesitantly interact and share experiences, even though the boat mum appears to have gone through this dynamic before and is pessimistic about the possibility of sharing problems and mutual consoling due to her profession.
The film reaches moments of incredible poignancy as it broaches themes of illness and dying, but the sensitivity of these scenes, which rivals that of Ozu and more, is marred by creative missteps. Firstly thee crabs are dipped in paraffin and set alight, they cringe and writhe in agony as a result, and secondly the film has a sentimental attitude to war in Manchuria. This war was an aggressive, unprovoked and genocidal war, characterized by the almost obliteration of Oroqen and Hezhen ethnic groups, and by atrocities that are unfathomable in their cruelty, including human vivisection without pain relief and deliberately promoting epidemics. It is not enough to characterise this episode as one of nostalgic Japanese loss of comrades, as embodied by the singing of melancholic and misguided war songs, "our friends lie buried under rocks in the fields. It was only yesterday...sad yesterday...that they charged bravely against the enemy and gave them their just deserts." No Japanese soldier handed out any just deserts in Manchuria, rather they imposed a cruel and insane reign of terror.
Muddy River is a compassionate slice-of-life movie from post-war Osaka that suffers from blind spots. The film's attempts to illustrate Kiichi's developmental damage through animal suffering create a profound disconnect between empathy and ethical responsibility. The positive reception of the movie highlights the risks of engaging with arthouse material superficially. If a film fails to change the way we see the world or help us recognize moral wrongs, but instead invites passive indulgence in an aesthetic of empathy, it ultimately fails in its mission.
