Madadayo

Madadayo appears to be a light comedy on the surface, but, as in all Kurosawa films, he draws you deeper and deeper into the characters and takes his time to tell the story the way he wants to. Also, Madadayo is quite charming. I loved it. I felt I was transported to post war Japan and given more than just a glimpse into the Japanese personality, and that is a gift in my book. What a brilliant director Kurosawa was. I will miss him dearly.

Madadayo (1993) was the last film written and directed by the great Akira Kurosawa. Sadly, although the movie bears touches of Kurosawa's genius, it is not a truly memorable film.

The plot follows the life of a kindly professor, who retires from teaching but who is revered, respected, and almost worshiped by his former students. The problem for me was that we see the professor's many child-like foibles--which the students don't appear to mind--but we never see any evidence of the professor's greatness.

The professor taught German, not philosophy or religion, so the subject matter of his lectures couldn't have been inherently inspiring. We are never told what he said within or outside of class that brings about the fervent admiration of his students.

After the professor retires, he suffers a series of unpleasant incidents--some serious and some trivial. In each case he students come together to help restore his life to balance. In addition, they have a highly formalized party on his birthday each year. Eventually they include their wives, children, and grandchildren in these laudatory ceremonies.

The film is not boring, and it excels in the crowd scenes as well as in the scenes of wartime destruction, but it never provides a central core of substance that would have made the details and incidents meaningful.

We saw this film at the excellent Dryden Theatre at George Eastman House in Rochester. However, most of the action takes place indoors, and I'm sure the movie would work well on the small screen.

I just finished watching "Madadayo" and can still feel tears welling up. I was moved at the beautiful movie and its message of kindness and living well. It took me a while to get into the film as it is rather slow and not much does happen, but Kurosawa is a master of mood, characterization and setting the scene and gradually, the movie takes its hold on you.

The movie starts with the Professor's retirement from teaching. We learn he taught German, and he must have been a good teacher as well as quite a character, because large numbers of his students stay in touch with him through the decades. Kurosawa shows us that the students love and respect him dearly, as well as finding him eccentric. They refer to him as "solid gold". However, I kept asking "Why? Why would these people with busy lives, following their own paths, continue to hold birthday parties for their eccentric old professor?" And as the movie continued, I found myself answering my own question. Why not? It's a win-win situation for all involved. The students value the professor's company and despite joking protests to the contrary, the professor enjoys the visits and increasingly comes to depend on them. In post-WWII Japan, there must have been little to celebrate, so having an annual excuse to get together with people you enjoy would be reason enough. Kurosawa also expounds on one of his main themes from "Red Beard"; kindness begets kindness and that is what we continually shown in "Madadayo". The students help build the professor a new house after his home is destroyed in the fire-bombing of Tokyo. The professor loses his cat and the students and the community band together to try to find it, celebrating and congratulating one another when they think they find it, and commiserating and empathizing when they don't. The annual birthday parties continue and evolve from just the male students drinking with their professor to banquets involving their wives and children. I began to fall under the spell of how wonderful it would be to be part of this community, to know these people, to know there were others looking out for me, willing to help if I needed it, relishing my company, and knowing that once a year I could get together with all my friends from school (the ones we all lose touch with because our busy lives follow diverging paths), celebrate the life of a great man (a favourite teacher's lessons stay with you forever) and be part of something bigger and gentler and kinder.

I can understand why someone expecting the excitement of "Seven Samurai", the suspense of "High and Low", or the innovation of "Rashomon" would be disappointed in "Madadayo", but if you enjoyed the lessons of "Red Beard", the gentle pull of "Madadayo" will delight and soothe you. You'll be left with a serene feeling of well-being, wishing you could be one of the Professor's students.

The question 'are you ready, are you ready to die?' is answered, as a commonplace, in the negative. Who of us is ready to die? None. Even old age, the harbinger of defeat, cannot accept the fate it portends: an untimely death, for all death is untimely. There is acceptance of death, sure, but no one, save the seldom few who are most miserable, invites it into their home. To me it is a truism that there is nothing more lucid and apparent and viscerally vocal than our united cry - Madadayo!

But there is something more at play in this film than this pithy commonplace, something deeper. It is a masterpiece, and one sadly overlooked in his dense oeuvre.

Why are you not ready to die?

Here is the broader and more philosophical inquiry at the heart of this movie; and I invite you to look into your own life and recall the opulence of emotion in your most miserable moments, and to ask yourself unflinchingly why, if the egregiousness truly stacks above your head, like the loss of a beloved cat named Nora, do you continue to live in this world. What is the cause behind your proclamation - Madadayo! Is it affirmative, or is it a resignation?

Misery befalls us all. But is misery all there is? Of course not, and Kurosawa rightly thinks not: "There is an enviable world of warm hearts." The professor tells it to us himself: he would have sunk into the mire of his despair had it not been for the kindness and generosity of his friends and relatives, and even those strangers unfamiliar with his plight.

He has a crisis when he loses the cat and another one in the shack. Both times he is saved by his friends. There is much that happens in a man's life, much of it good, much ambivalent; he sees many evils and performs some, regrettably, himself.

But the answer is there, in our lives, staring us in the face. Why are you not will to say you are ready for death?

The world of warm hearts is astoundingly beautiful. It is beautifully portrayed in the movie, with heartfelt earnestness in the manner in which the students revere and support their professor; but, more to the point, it is also intrinsically beautiful. In the final scene the professor, now an old man, dreams himself a boy, a remembrance perhaps, and finds himself playing a game of hide and seek with some friends on a farm among conical stacks of hay. The boys on the road call out to him continuously, are you ready? as he tries to find a suitable hiding place among the hay. Madadayo (not yet) he exclaims to them. He then slowly covers himself with hay and just as he is about to say that he is ready for them (ready for death) the sun sets over the horizon of a surreal landscape imbued with green, orange and red, a multicoloured dream, and the camera pans up and over the sky, and it is here that we see the beauty of the world; it is this beauty, which is joined with the ethical, the kindness of people, that stops the young boy and the old man from saying that they are ready; it is this solemn beauty that keeps us all going, if we should choose, in our carousals and sojourns, to take notice of it. You are left with a broad smile on your face as you take leave of this master, and every time I think about him I am happy for the life he lived and sad that he departed us so soon.

i'd put off watching Madadayo because i'd had apprehensions about a "modern day" kurosawa piece (even though it spans from 1943 to 1960), and i wish i hadn't. it was a beautiful, -beautiful- film and one definitely worth seeing.

the premise is simple -- it follows the life and relationship between a professor and his former students -- but the film itself is anything but. it's especially touching, knowing that it was kurosawa's ultimate work. despite the epic period masterpieces that were his hallmark, i can think of no better film to serve as kurosawa's last than this simple, elegant, sublime piece.

don't make the same mistake i did. don't put off seeing this movie. whether you're a fan of his work or not, you're guaranteed to enjoy it. it's the kind of films that transcend genres and leaves you touched, whether you were looking for it or not.