In name, Kore-eda’s Still
Walking suggests tension, a contradiction in going on with life while
preserving one’s memories. In the case
of the Yokoyama family, Ryota somewhat reluctantly brings his new wife and
stepson to his parents’ house, where the entire family commemorates the twelfth
anniversary of the eldest son Junpei’s death.
Ryota, at times, voices frustration at the futility of remembering; he
sees a problem, in particular, in the annual practice of inviting Yoshio, the
boy whose life was saved at the expense of Junpei’s, to the Yokoyama house on
the anniversary of Junpei’s death.
During the night of the anniversary, Ryota makes a suggestion to his
mother:
“Say, isn’t it time we let Yoshio off the hook? Let’s stop inviting him.”
“Why?” replies Toshiko.
“I feel sorry for him.
It seems painful for him to see us.”
“That’s why we invite him.
Can’t have him forgetting after just a dozen years. It was his fault Junpei died.”
“But Yoshio didn’t--”
“It makes no difference.
Not to a parent. Not having
someone to hate makes it all the worse for me.
So once a year I make him feel awful too. Will the Gods punish me for that? So I’ll invite him next year and the year
after.”
“That’s what you keep inviting him here for? You’re cruel.”
“I’m not cruel. I
think it’s normal.”
“Everyone keeps using that word.”
The idea of “preservation of life by a representation of
life” constitutes what is normal or not normal for individual characters in Still Walking. Toshiko preserves her son’s life by keeping
his room intact, inviting (and, subsequently, mocking) the beneficiary of
Junpei’s sacrifice, and even celebrating the appearance of a butterfly as a
sign of Junpei’s visitation. Atsushi’s
idea of normal, in contrast, consists of a rejection of preservation via
symbolic action when he describes to Ryota his “normal” reaction to a rabbit
dying at school.
“Rena started saying we should write letters to the rabbit.”
“What’s wrong with writing letters?” Ryota asks.
“Letters no one will read?” says Atsushi, answering Ryota’s
question with a question of his own, which is not to say Atsushi does not have
his own methods of preservation. His
desire, after all, of becoming a piano tuner when he grows up is his way of
preserving, and by extension, continuing, traditions of a father he does not
remember.
Photos figure prominently as objects of preservation throughout
Still Walking, as the camera rests on
a framed portrait of Junpei several times and also during a scene in which
Toshiko shares childhood pictures of Ryota with her daughter, Chinami, and her
new daughter-in-law, Yukari. The
concerns characters have with representation are mirrored by Kore-eda in his
presentation of the film. Stylistically
similar to Uzo, at least in terms of framing, Kore-eda provides deep shot after
deep shot in an attempt to reveal the complicated realism of family life. In doing so, he offers the spectator a
glimpse at the dynamism of individuality in conflict with the static nature of
environment.
Kore-eda “create[s] the illusion of three-dimensional space
within which things appeared to exist as our eyes in reality see them,” thus
satisfying, in a Bazinian sense, the spectator’s desire for reality. In scenes that capture the family at
mealtime, we see a mixture of long, medium long, and medium shots of mundane
activities that emphasize relationships among characters. During Yoshio’s visit, for example, the scene
begins with the camera fitting six characters completely within its frame. The deep plane of action aids the spectator
in understanding the feelings of each Yokoyama family member towards Yoshio,
center-left and sweaty. To his left (and closer to the lens) is
Ryota, downcast and sympathetic to Yoshio.
To the right and closest to the lens we see the backs of Chinami and her
daughter, hands on their chins, as they courteously, if not a little patronizingly,
ask Yoshio about his current prospects. Farther
in the distance and to the right of Yoshio is Toshiko, setting up a fan to ease
the guest’s suffering but also to get a close-up look of it. Farthest in the distance is Kyohei, back
turned to the camera in utter disgust of Yoshio, the pathetic surviving
preservation of his proud son.
In The Story of Film, Mark
Cousins describes the effect of the composition in Ozu’s films on the
spectator, a description equally fitting for Kore-eda, at least in Still Walking: “the more you watch, the
more you feel the order of space in his movies.
His frames were windows on very balanced pictorial worlds.” The order of space in Still Walking implies objectivity, a fly-on-the-wall perspective
that accentuates the unemotional detachedness of its technological medium, the
lens. Bazin states, “between originating
object and its reproduction there intervenes only the instrumentality of a
nonliving agent. For the first time an
image of the world is formed automatically, without the creative intervention
of man. The personality of the photographer
enters into the proceedings only in his selection of the object to be
photographed and by way of the purpose he has in mind.”
Kore-eda’s purpose, arguably, is to show us a normal family (with each member sharing
his/her own ideas of normal) doing normal things, as they remember their
son, brother, husband, and father. His
framing of multiple objects at once uncovers the complexity of the family
get-together by giving us moving snapshots.
Recurring tableaus of the kitchen, the dining room, and other locations
show us places that do not change but characters that do (or at least have the
desire to). For by the end of the film,
we see a familiar scene with a familiar backdrop, a family visiting a cemetery on
commemoration day, but instead of an exact repetition of an earlier scene with
Ryota and his mother, we see Ryota and his family, now with the addition of a
daughter, visiting the grave of Junpei. “Photography
does not create eternity, as art does, it embalms time, rescuing it simply from
its proper corruption. Viewed in this
perspective, the cinema is objectivity in time.” Kore-eda captures a family that, despite claims
to do otherwise, fails to keep promises and/or make changes. Regarding his father, Ryota “never did get to
a soccer match with him,” nor did he give his mother “a ride in a car.” Predictably, the tension between Ryota and
his parents continued up to their deaths as he and his family returned for
Junpei’s annual commemoration. Kore’eda’s
portrayal of realism is a life in which things change while not really changing. As if the subject in a still shot, one must
keep walking even if he or she is repeating mistakes from the past.
No comments:
Post a Comment