Redwarmin This movie is the proof that the world is becoming a sick and dumb place

ChanBot i must have seen a different film!!

Smartorhypo Highly Overrated But Still Good

Ariella Broughton It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

Yashua Kimbrough (jimniexperience) WARNING: This movie is not a comedy .. This is not a "happy" or "joyous" movie .. The only thing that "lightens" this grim subject matter is the kid song musical they keep playing over and over again ..This is a veeery dark movie (I say darker than Kanako ,, and way less fun) about a woman, Matsuko, and her past .. She's discovered died in the field one day and her young nephew decides to decode the mystery of his Aunt whom he never knew ..----- S P O I L E R S -----It shows Matsuko 50 year life span dealing with: negligent parents, sibling jealously, abandoning home, cycle of abusive relationships, cycle of being used for her body and sex, life as a massage parlor girl, getting pimped, murder, prison, unemployment, general insanity, hiding from your loved ones, living the final days of your life in complete solitude, to eventual - death . Yeah .... I say if you want to see a depressing tale of the downwards spiral of a young girl go see World of Kanako .

chaos-rampant The film is about memory as the English title states, this brings it under one of the most vital (and most cinematic) subgroups in cinema, films about our ability to recall life as illusion and mind rather than as just a bunch of surrounding facts. So what kind of recall here? A vagrant middle-aged woman is discovered dead one day, the kind of nameless death that might make neighbors pause for only a brief moment, and this is the first admission here; ordinary life next door can be the center of a rich world. This is done with a little too much obvious caprice for my taste but the essence is the same, we go back to find this woman when she was a sweet young girl with all of life and heartbreak still ahead of her.I don't know how much is personal for the filmmaker here but much is revealed by simply examining appearances. A vibrant memory, with a hyperactive consciousness that joyously swims through tragedy. It starts like one of those hyper Japanese TV ads, the filmmaker apparently has plenty of experience in those, but as we progress the whole is mellowed and given resonance behind the popup colors. This is the second admission, that life deserves to be celebrated with as much color. A preeminent formulator of Noh wrote in the 1400s, Zen inspired, that "life is a lying dream, he only wakes who casts the world aside". There's no such effort here to awaken to what creates suffering and to purify, the film is simply taken in by the swirl and sadness of suffering. I was reminded of the lush Powell/Pressburger melodramas from the 40s as well as recent Julie Taymor with her song and dance. Others thought of Tim Burton. To be sure though the fixation with color and artifice is as recent in Japan as anime but as old as kabuki.So, overwrought and sentimental melodrama on one side, too much so for my taste. Just the same I appreciate the bubbly air that refuses to dwell on misfortune; it's quickly brushed aside for some new heartbreak to come along. Yet it doesn't address its own question about the meaninglessness of life and it's in this deeper way that the absence of awakening resurfaces. The girl is merely buffeted along by attachment and need and at no point, down to her final moments, comes to a realization.In the list of hearbreaking films ultimately this deserves its own place next to Capra's Wonderful Life. This is, as much as anything else, because the filmmaker leaves his heroine to a horrible life and meaningless end because in the end she's only the figment of a story that he uses to inspire with but that inspiration and change is never allowed to her inside the story. The bittersweet worldview says, suffer as much as you are able to bear, in the end there is release.The penultimate scene is possibly one of the twenty best shots I have seen in my life, a flow of consciousness that lifts up from her and races through waters. Marvelous work. This is the cultivated awareness of the illusory life the Japanese have known for centuries across Shinto temples, Zen and the Noh stage.But the maker ends this a scene late for my taste. The last one revisits the home of childhood as the place from which to ascend, paying homage to the well known stairway scene from A Matter of Life and Death by Powell/Pressburger, which just says too much now as it did then.

Kong Ho Meng One thing that i can commend about this movie is its superior usage of originality. This makes the 1st film i hv ever watched where the events are very comical, with Disney-like fairy-tale entertainment, enjoyable to laugh; yet at the same time manage to blend in the pain and tragedy that will make for some tear-jerking moments. Its like a good blend of black and white paint which doesn't become grey at all. Although the movie isn't too deep and simple to watch, i give high praise for it being the closest thing i hv seen that manages to express that life is indeed colourful, just as matsuko's life was. In the end, i don't feel happy nor sad for matsuko, i feel that she is considerably fortunate to have all types of colours in her life before departing, even though it doesn't turn out like that. It is not entirely perfect. I don't complain on its unrealistic comical moments nor that it needs improvisation. Its fine enough. But I don't see the purpose of including her nephew to 'narrate' her story, and hers isn't an outstanding testimony that deserves to be memorable -- she clearly is a weak character. But some of the messages does ring quite true: life is shapenned by what one gives not received, and her blessings and misfortunes both did formed the lives of others who were involved.

CountZero313 When a twenty-something NEET is sent by his father to clean out the apartment of his estranged aunt, 53-year-old Matsuko, he becomes intrigued by the life story of this reclusive, shabby, old-before-her-time woman. As he pieces together her life, he unlocks various family secrets, and learns a thing or two about his own life.Tetsuya Nakashima's film is energetic and thoughtful, in turns hilarious and deeply moving. It's hyper-stylised, with Technicolor vividly utilized, song-and-dance numbers, and some schlock violence straight from the Nikkatsu back catalogue. But it all gels into a magical whole. Interestingly, there is a sly poke at the Showa-nostalgia genre enjoying a contemporary flurry in Japan, the pastiche of the visuals undercut by the brutalities the economic and social mores of the time inflict on Matsuko. The fact that she meets her fate at the hands of the feral children of Heisei is no random element.Miki Nakatani has matured into Japan's most fascinating and watchable actress, the combination of beauty and vulnerability never more alluring than in her portrayal here. But it is Nakashima's slick script, elliptical structuring, and especially his brisk editing that make this film so special. I was singing 'makete, nobashite' for days afterward. One of the best Japanese films of the 21st century.