Monsieur Merci

Ken Uehara is Mr. Thank You, the young bus driver on the route from a small fishing village to Tokyo. He carries messages for the people on foot, buys them records in the city, shares their gossip, and when he comes across people on the road, he honks his horn, and greets them with a cheerful "Arigato."

Hiroshi Shimizu's early talkie film gives us a tour from a small fishing village and the long road that runs between the mountains and the sea. He also gives us glimpses into the people: the girl being taken into Tokyo by her mother to be sold to a brothel; the pompous insurance salesman; the cynical woman who cadges cigarettes from him, shares her liquor with her fellow passengers -- except the insurance salesman, and the people on the road, who cannot afford his bus, but know he is a friend. It's a fine little portrait of country life, with a village strung out the length of the road, where everyone knows everyone else's business, and everyone is kind to each other -- except those people in the roadster who keep passing the bus with never a thank you.

This was the first movie of Shimizu Hiroshi I have watched and it left a good impression on me. The story seemed simple, but the scenes were well-executed. The film offers the viewer the chance to hop on Mr. Thank You's bus and drive through Japan's breath-taking countryside while listening to stories of people from all walks of life. It was very interesting to see how Japan looked like in the 1930s as well, far from how it looks like in modern times. All in all, a simple, lighthearted film that I would want to re-watch from time to time.

Nice little Japanese comedy. Mr. Thank You is a bus driver who often brings people from the country to Tokyo. As he drives along the narrow dirt roads, he profusely thanks the farmers and such who move to the side as he passes them. At one village, he picks up a 17 year old girl and her mother. The girl is being transported to Tokyo, where her mother will sell her into prostitution. It's the Great Depression, and the family can no longer afford to support her. Over the course of the trip, Mr. Thank You becomes more and more aware of the girl's sad face. The rest of the bus chat amongst themselves, drink, smoke, whatever. The film runs about 80 minutes, and, honestly, is pretty slight. The titular character and the young girl are rather dull people. A couple of the other passengers are more interesting, but they also are generic types of people (e.g., modern woman or stuffy businessman). It's funny much of the time, and well filmed. I like seeing the Japanese countryside and its people. Japanese films of every era focus way too much on just Tokyo that it's easy to forget the rest of the country.

From the references in the film, it is not hard to infer this takes place in the mountainous southern end of the Izu peninsula (part of Shizuoka prefecture). The towns of Yugano, Kawazu-onsen, and Shimoda (mentioned in the film), are all in this area. The railroad (then as now) runs up the eastern side of the peninsula, so the bus is taking passengers from the relatively isolated western side across the Amagi mountains to the eastern side. From the configuration of roads, we can deduce that the starting point of the journey was probably the town of Matsuzaki.

In the film, this picturesque journey feels a very lengthy one. On the modern paved road, the entire trip today takes about 40 minutes by car.

This is a simple premise about a bus driver dubbed Mr. Thank You because he always thanks people when they move to the side of the road to let him pass. Everyone he knows likes him and many say thank you back. This story is mainly about the people who get on the bus headed to a train. One is a mother and daughter, the mother only going so far to say goodbye to her daughter who is presumably being sold (this was the Great Depression, when things like that happened). There is a mix of people on the bus with different reasons for being there and they forge a relationship one might have if they were all going on a bus tour. You see some of the countryside of Japan, some of which is pretty even in black and white. It was a grim time for the world then and this film, while having a bit of light comedy, also has some sadness. As the film went on, I was more interested. Mr. Shimizu, as far as I'm concerned, can be mentioned in the same breath of the titans of Japanese film, like Kurosawa, Ozu, Mizoguchi and Naruse, as well as others. If you're interested in Japanese film, you owe it to yourself to buy the box set that has this film, which was just received domestically. Mr. Shimizu was very adept at capturing everyday people as they were living their lives. This is a triumph.