MADADAYO
Reviewed by Harvey Karten Winstar Cinema Director: Akira Kurosawa Writer: Akira Kurosawa Cast: Tatsuo Matsumura, Kyoko Kagawa, Hishashi Igawa, Joji Tokoro
I'm envious. Here's why. I taught high school kids for over thirty years in much the way that the guy in Akira Kurosawa's thirtieth and final movie taught in college. Never once did the pupils ever stand at attention when I entered the room. Occasionally when the bell ran concluding the final class, a couple of youngsters would come up to shake my hand, but usually they just walked right through me to their next class. They never built a house for me and they never helped me look for a lost cat. (OK, I never had a cat, just a dog, and he never got lost.) You think all this is too much to ask? Not if you see "Madadayo," a reflection based on the life of an actual professor who became a noted writer in Japan after his retirement and who was virtually worshipped by his loving students and later by the students' children and even their grandchildren.
But if the name "Kurosawa" is synonymous in your mind with some cool battle scenes (think "Ran") you're in for a surprise. This man, whom Roger Ebert called in 1993 "the greatest living director," has often proven himself capable of knocking out films on a wealth of themes. (Kurosawa had since died at the age of 88.)
"Madadayo" means "not yet" in Japanese and is an expression used as repeatedly in this absorbing film as "you know" is used in Gen-X-targeted movies produced by Hollywood. "Madadayo" is a reflection on aging and friendship, two of life's major themes--though the former is not the sort of focus that most of us have taken in during our moviegoing days. While it deals, as stated above, with the life of a real person named Hyakken Uchida--and, by the way, one that could remind film buffs in America of John Ford's "The Long Gray Line"--this story stretches over a period of seventeen years in the life of the teacher, beginning during the war years in 1943.
Uchida, called simply "professor" or "sensei" throughout the tale, opens the movie by entering a room filled with highly disciplined male college students, calling them to attention, ordering them to bow, and then employing the sense of humor that permeates the film he announces that he will retire to spend his twilight years writing books. Some of his students soon go to his small house to converse and share saki and tea with him, but when the house is destroyed by B- 29's in an air raid, the students proceed to build him a larger place to live. In addition to the professor's meeting with his favorite students, he is feted each year on his birthday right to the age of 77 at a catered affair, obviously a function showing the material success of the men. Though there is little physical action in the movie--for example Kurosawa would not think of showing you an actual bombing raid since his aim is a contemplation of aging with its expectation of death--one incident is particularly poignant. When the teacher's cat Nora disappears, the man is broken up. He cannot eat or sleep, cries most of the day, and eventually he and his students go all-out to locate the truant feline.
For a story on such a sober theme, there is considerable good cheer and humor throughout. For example early on, told that his small house had under previous tenancies been the source of burglaries, the professor puts up signs saying "Burglar's Passage," "Burglar's Recess Area" and "Burglar's Exit" to the laugh-out-loud amusement of his favorite ex- students Takayama (Hisashi Igawa) and Amaki (George Tokoro), who pretend one night to be burglars simply to see whether the place has been secured.
This picture will be looked at with affection by all moviegoers who have had heroes like this gentle and witty man and should result in many leaving the auditorium after the screening with broad smiles on their faces--as the director specifically hoped that they would. The film is warm, whimsical, tender, and genuinely heartfelt.
Not Rated. Running time: 134 minutes. (C) 2000 by Harvey Karten, film_critic@compuserve.com
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