Madadayo (1993) User Reviews

The fruits of quiet observation

[KFL · 7/10 · 12 February 2000]

I have to disagree with the individual who suggests that viewers who liked Ran or Seven Samurai will like this. I think the individual who compared this to some of Ingmar Bergman's work is much nearer the mark.

If you're not ready to observe rather mundane happenings in the interest of understanding universal life experiences, you probably won't appreciate this film. It takes some serenity and patience on the part of the viewer, which however are rewarded.

The English subtitles are competent, but cannot explain everything. The word for "fool" in Japanese is written using the characters for horse and for deer; hence the stew of horse meat and venison becomes a "fool's stew." And more importantly, the title Madadayo, though correctly translated as Not Yet, is very often associated with a game of hide-and-seek, with the children who are hiding crying "madadayo!" until they've found a good spot to hide. This will serve to explain the final scene, and make it more poignant perhaps...for the Japanese too speak of returning to one's childhood in extreme old age.

Perfect movie for the end of one masterful directing career

[aleksandarsarkic · 8/10 · 31 January 2016]

Madadayo was last movie of legendary director Akira Kurosawa, and what a great way to end fantastic directing career spanning 50 years. I have watched nearly more than half of his work, but somehow i didn't watched Madadayo to this day, and i have missed a lot, this movie is beautiful. It is long and slow paced like many others Kurosawa's movies, but it's worth in the end, ending is simply beautiful it is sad but peaceful at the same time, like every other natural death. The most i like in this movie is the message to be good in your life to yourself and to others and you will live the peaceful quite life to the end, the connection of professor with his students is very touching, from beginning to the end. I see that many people complain on the part of the movie with missing cat, but i also like that part, and see the coming of new cat as metaphor for never ending circle of reincarnation. I am really recommending this movie to all lovers of Akira Kurosawa's work and Japanese cinema, and to all people who still have soul and heart, i am not recommending to people who don't like slow paced movie and movie with many dialogues. My grade 8/10.

viewers awarded... in the end

[smakawhat · 8/10 · 20 August 2003]

Madadayo chronicles the life of a retired professor who lives vicariously through all the students he has taught. The students admire him greatly, he is visited often and many stay to listen to his whimsy and foolish stories. The professor is a child at heart, and not much really happens. The film doesn't have a plot really, and only 2 things start to focus around the story one being the loss of the professors house after the allied bombing, and the loss of a stray cat he adopts years later.

To the viewer though there is much in between stories and people to digest such as a great celebratory dinner that is held every year, and so on. To some degree I will admit I liked the camradare that I witnessed, the great dialogue, the professors childish personality, but I wanted the film to move forward and to at least give me something to focus on.

The lost cat scene was a good distraction but it did go a little more longer than neccesary. I find this often sometimes in Kurosawa's work (The lost gun in Stray Dogs, following the suspect in High and Low reminded me of this). However, the hallmarks of his great filmmaking are apparent in the dinner scenes, cinematography, and conversations. He also provides scenes that the viewer could take as obligatory (such as a death, or the possible return of the cat), but Kurosawa changes this so the outcome is not what you expect but refreshing.

However, the best is saved for last... litteraly. As I was waiting for the film to end, the hallmark of greatness arrives without question in the span of what must have been only 5 minutes. The ending just wraps up everything so perfectly, and it made me from just liking the film to instantly loving it. It gives a real insight into the professors mind who is greatly admired and respected.

Rating 8 out of 10

One Long Glass of Beer

[tedg · 19 November 2002]

Spoilers herein.

Well, filmmaking doesn't get more personal than this. Conceptually, it fits between `Ran' and `Red Beard,' but the central character is clearly reflective of the esteemed filmmaker.

This Prospero is a writer. (Though he was also a German teacher, it is his writing that makes him special.) We have the requisite three worlds: the `real' world of Kurosawa, (who creates) the world of Uchida, (who creates) the world of Nora, the cat. Uchida appreciates another culture's literature as Kurosawa does (in American film).

Kurosawa often uses a narrative device where stillness in the narrative increases the energy of the target. It is a definitive Japanese concept, but one that we who have lived with him know. So here, as we watch the slow aging and housing and visiting of the man, as we settle into the ordinariness of what we see, our attention is focused on the fulcrum of the whole thing: the fate of Nora.

Kurosawa's point here is that his students love him of course. But once he is gone, they'll find another. He knows we venerate his films, and also knows that he is merely a small hut in which we stay while under duress, but that we will move on as the opportunity avails.

There's a particularly wonderful episode at his first party. There amidst all the worshiping speeches, a man gets up and recites all the train stops on a very long line, a reference to his self-reference in `Dodesukaden.' There are many such references to his other films, possibly every one of them. I caught many and warmly remembered them and him.

Here is the last tapestry of metaphor from the master of film metaphor. Check out the very last: hiding. It was his style to himself hide and to hide things in his work, including the truth of his own concealment. I wish we could all exit with such graceful selfawareness.

Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 4: Worth watching.

Heartfelt

[gbill-74877 · 6/10 · 21 April 2021]

A touching farewell, Kurosawa saying "Madadayo" ("Not yet!) to death, but knowing that death is inevitable. The compassion his students show for him after he retires at 60, with him thinking that that's when he's an "old man," is heartfelt. There are some very lovely, natural scenes here - the husband and wife in their small shack through the changing seasons, the birthday party at 60 with the beer chugging and toasts (such brilliant, organic acting all around!), and the older man at 77 telling the young kids to "find something you really like" when it comes time to choose a path in life. Unfortunately, the second half of the film labors through an awfully long subplot involving a lost cat, and too much of the film is spent in gatherings, drinking and singing old songs. Its heart is in the right place and it gives a perspective on old age and the value of maintaining lifelong camaraderie, but it just got a little tedious to watch at times. I absolutely loved the final scene, dreaming back to youth, and wish the film had had more flashbacks to explain this man's life as a teacher. Certainly worth seeing because it's Kurosawa's last film and it touches the heartstrings, but it's not one I'd reach for again.

Beautiful ... how life ideally should be

[Irradiata · 9/10 · 5 October 2006]

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.

Flawed film from a great master

[Red-125 · 7/10 · 4 October 2010]

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.

Kurosawa's final mellow mood

[Chris Knipp · 10/10 · 1 May 2006]

Kurosawa's last film was released in the US at his death, five years after it was made. It's the story of a retired schoolteacher and it's unabashedly sentimental and heartwarming, but unlike the lonely old man of the famous English schoolteacher tale Goodbye, Mr. Chips who has to be humanized and refuses to retire, Hyakken Uchida (Tatsuo Matsumura) is different from other men in his oddball attitude and intellectual accomplishments but neither lonely nor sad, and the story begins with his very willing retirement. He's both a mischievous joker and a happily married man who likes to stay up all night drinking and singing with his ex-students in all the years that follow that retirement depicted in the film. Uchida's quirky individuality is celebrated by his admirers, and the film depicts him solely in his relationship with them. They give him lavish presents (including after WWII a nice house with a liquid garden) and an annual birthday party, and they cherish his spirit, his personality, and his funny, thought-provoking remarks.

Madadayo is based on a series of books in turn drawn from the life of an actual military school teacher. Teacher -- sensei -- of course has a special sense in Japanese. It's a role one takes on for life, and one's "sensei" is a permanent attachment based on admiration and respect. Corny and sentimentalized as this "sensei" is, he's a richly charming character and the way his former students carouse with him and cherish him before, during, and after the War is expressive of some of the best aspects of Japanese culture.

At the annual parties, the ritual is that the sensei's students chant, Mahda kai?" (are ready?) and he sings out, "ma-da-da-yo!" (not yet!). But though he may not go gentle into that good night, he does accept old age with good humor. Madadayo is about growing old, about growing old frankly, growing old gracefully, about being useful as one grows old through dignity and humor, about the mutual benefits that accrue when the old receive the respect of younger generations. It's about old-fashioned loyalty to one's school, and about respecting and honoring eccentricity and respecting and honoring the intellectual type. The former students, who are doctors, lawyers, business men, and so on, recognize that in his oddball impracticality, his "absent-minded professor" style, their sensei possesses wisdom and creative individuality they lack and they always say he's "pure gold." One might imagine them proposing him for designation as a "national treasure." Sensei is absurdly weak and vulnerable at times, witness his emotional collapse when his wife's male cat Nora disappears and he goes to pieces with grief. But importantly he articulates this grief eloquently and with a certain detachment for his ex-students. And they respect his peculiarities so much that they send out an all points bulletin for Nora and are gravely concerned for his return. (It never comes, but the sensei's wife finds another cat and eventually both are memorialized by handsome gravestones in the garden.) However silly he is, his behavior is simply more enthusiastic and emotional than others', and finally this sensei simply represents what is wisest and most human.

And sensei's wife represents a perfect, idealized traditional Japanese woman (without the function in her case of mother, however), always deferential, formal, polite, sweet, but elegant and noble, the repository of hospitality, the hearth, loyalty, goodness, patience, steadfastness: you can't help being impressed by the actress Kyôko Kagawa's supple, unflaggingly consistent, energetic but restrained performance, comparable to Tatsuo Matsumura's. As the sensei, Matsumura is an initially off-putting but ultimately irresistible and splendidly rich character -- pitiful, cute, wise, silly, tough, stridently singing his old songs and making his imperishable jokes which his many admirers never fail to laugh at loudly and delightedly. They need him tremendously -- this is the film's chief message, to value special people as they age -- and so they take wonderful care of him. When the film begins, his book sales have enabled him to retire and focus on writing in a small house. When the War comes it's completely destroyed by Allied bombs and he and his wife live in a tiny hut. At the end of the war the students build a lovely spacious house with a garden made up entirely of a "donut" shaped pool in which carp the sensei fancifully describes as "giant" can swim around endlessly.

Many of the scenes are Ozu-like in their quietude and use of a stationary camera as the sensei sits with his chief admirers and drinks and talks, usually with his wife sitting by to supply food and drink. But there is a large cast of characters and in the final annual birthday dinner women and children and grandchildren are now present. The drinking of a large stein of beer by the sensei before he performs the "Mahda kai?""Ma-da-da-yo!" ritual and gives his amusing speech is probably based on Germanic practices: Uchida taught German and must have studied in Germany.

The sensei's unflagging spirit and humor and his former students' equally unflagging devotion make for an inspiring and beautiful fantasy. It is a wise and pleasant dream, and Kurosawa's charming evocation of it speaks well of his final years.

The film was made in 1993, released in the US in 1998 when Kurosawa died, re-released in 2000. It is timeless, and any year is a good year to get to know it and chew over its many, many endearing passages.

For Kurosawa completists

[charlesem · 6/10 · 15 March 2017]

Akira Kurosawa's Madadayo isn't quite the autumnal masterpiece we want a great director's final film to be, but it has a suitably valedictory tone. It's a portrait of a kind of Japanese Mr. Chips, a teacher so beloved that his students reunite every year to celebrate his birthday with lots of singing and drinking. The film is based on the life of Hyakken Uchida, an actual professor of German at Hosei University in Tokyo. We never really see what made Uchida (Tatsuo Matsumura) so beloved by his students: The film opens with his retirement from teaching so he can devote more time to writing, but we can infer from the genial, eccentrically bookish manner that peeps through his professorial sternness that he has always been a favorite of his students, often drinking with them after hours. The narrative (such as it is -- Kurosawa's screenplay, based on the real Uchida's essays, has no real plot or dramatic arc) picks up on his birthday in 1943, when his former students help him and his wife (Kyoko Kagawa) move into a new house. When the house is destroyed by fire from the American bombing, Uchida and his wife move into a tiny shed that was an outbuilding on a wealthy man's estate and live there until after the war, when his students build a new house for him. We see him celebrate his 60th birthday with his students at a banquet that grows so noisy some GIs from the occupying forces arrive in a Jeep to check it out, but they leave with smiles on their faces. He's so beloved that when a rich man proposes to build a three-story house across the street from him, thereby casting Uchida's house and garden in shadow, the man selling the land reneges on the deal and then sells it to a group of the ex-students. The greatest crisis in his life is not the war but the loss of a beloved cat, who wanders off one day, causing him so much grief that his wife calls in the students to help find it. Eventually, a new cat takes up with Uchida and life goes on. At the film's end, Uchida collapses from a heart arrhythmia at the banquet celebrating his 77th birthday, but even then he calls out the phrase "Mada dayo!" ("Not yet!"), which has become his ritual defiance of death at his birthday celebrations. Matsumura's performance sustains the film, which at 2 hours and 14 minutes is overlong and more a film for Kurosawa completists than for general audiences. The birthday celebrations become wearyingly exuberant, and the search for the lost cat seems to go on forever, but the film is lightened by Kurosawa's sense of humor and his affection for the characters. It also touches on the changes in Japanese society over the years: The classroom scene at the beginning has a militaristic formality, and the drinking bouts of the early birthday celebrations are all-male affairs. But by the end, not only has Uchida's ever-dutiful wife joined in the celebration, but his students' wives, children, and grandchildren are present, too. (charlesmatthews.blogspot.com)

Life is a dream and it is beautiful

[aleksandar-kuraica · 10/10 · 17 February 2015]

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.

A simple, yet engrossing tale

[Scrooge-3 · 6/10 · 7 September 1999]

Kurosawa's final directorial effort, Madadayo is a simple, yet engrossing tale of a beloved teacher and mentor. His former students show their love for him by giving him a big birthday party every year, and by helping him in times of crisis. In spite of some very odd personality quirks, everyone around him benefits from his wisdom.

no better way to end his career

[polgas28 · 10/10 · 14 August 2003]

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.

I liked it except for the missing cat part

[create_evegb · 7/10 · 12 September 2007]

I watch Kurosawa's movies because they are packed with wisdom and Madadayo didn't lack the same. I was half way through 'No regrets for our youth' when I thought of watching 'Madadayao'('coz No regrets . . didn't interest me much)so I stopped watching it and started watching 'Madadyo'. Like every Kurosawa's movie 'Madadayo' delivered wisdom wittily. But I slowly lost interest in the movie when the professor starts brooding about the missing cat which I suppose is also bringing the quality of the character down, because I believe that a professor who is highly civilised wouldn't brood for days for a missing cat and I, thinking of being one of his students who hunt for the missing cat would really have given a blow on the professor's face for having called them from their duty.

And as I said before - 'I liked it except for the missing cat part '

failed attempt

[bedazzle · 4/10 · 5 October 2001]

The movie begins with the announced retirement of a beloved professor. Later we realized that he was so loved that his pupils follow him for the remainder of their lives, he is "pure gold." How quaint. The stronger the pupil/professor attatchment is the more out of place and unfounded it seems because we never witness their growing together. Instead it is simply assumed and the audience is supposed to grow with characters through the professor's witty stories. Granted, these stories are sometimes clever, but far from the hilarity you'd expect from the pupil's laughter. It's always sad when the characters in the movie are the only ones laughing at the jokes. Much like the unfounded relationship between the pupils and professor, is that of the cat and professor. This near half hour of depression over a barely known cat is almost unbearable. I guess the movie attempts to move the audience emotionally and link them with the characters; I failed with me. Personally, I was wishing the professor would just die already and end the boredom.

Madadayo travels deeper than most light comedies.

[yossarian100 · 25 February 2003]

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.

3.4.2024

[EasonVonn · 7/10 · 4 March 2024]

At the age of 83, Kurosawa draw an ending of his filmmaking career. As he himself said "me minus films equals zero." like Jean-Luc Godard, he dedicated himself into this great modern art form, and indeed had a place in this film directors pantheon.

But however, his finale is sterile, compared to his whole career. It's just like Ingmar Bergman, whose final film called SARABANDE, which there are not much bravura technique, just the most sincere emotions and love presented on the screen.

NOT YET, had the color and composition, or almost all film skills that can be account as the most moderate one in all the Kurosawa's film, so no doubt, it is bland, but heartfelt, all the sequences seems like in a same room, as everybody is dress-up with tied and suit and being Kurosawa-like implicit.

Kurosawa finally projected his own vision of laconic pageantry with the ending beautiful camera movement and sky with unmentionable color but it is gorgeous, accompanying with splendid music, it's a good ending though, but the whole film is close to an old man's sigh.

Sensitive Low-Paced Worship of Knowledge, Friendship and Life

[claudio_carvalho · 9/10 · 15 September 2005]

In a pre-WWII Tokyo, the professor of German Hyakken Uchida (Tatsuo Matsumura) decides to retire after thirty years of professorship, and dedicate to the career of writer. His students, some of them from different generations, love him and keep a close touch with the professor and his wife (Kyôko Kagawa) along his life. In 1943, the house of the professor is bombed, he loses all his possessions and moves to a simple gardener cottage. After the war, his former students build a new small house with a lake around, and every year along seventeen years, in the professor's birthday, they have a reunion with a funny ceremony, based on children's hide and seek and referring if the professor is ready to die. They ask the professor: "-Mahda-kai?" ("Are you ready?"), and the professor responds "-Madadayo!" ("Not yet?") and drinks a large glass of beer.

"Madadayo" is the last direction of Master Akira Kurosawa, and is a sensitive low-paced worship of knowledge, friendship and life. I found this movie very beautiful, and I would like to highlight some points. First of all, the character of the professor Hyakken Uchida, capable of be adored by his students of different generations, very connected to a cat, living with his beloved wife but without kids. There is no explanation, but it seems quite contradictory a man of such profile not having son or daughter. Another interesting point is the changing of behavior of Japanese society with women (and family) along time. In the sixty-first anniversary of the professor (First Madadayo), there are only men in the meeting room, in spite of war finished a few years ago. Seventeen years later, the room is crowded of men, women and children. The conclusion of the story, showing that life goes on, is awesome! Last but not the least, the music score is magnificent. My vote is nine.

Title (Brazil): "Madadayo"

Not yet

[davidmvining · 6/10 · 18 April 2022]

It's an interesting irony that the last film of Kurosawa's long career is titled Not Yet. He was a man who didn't see an end for his career just yet, but an accident left him lame in his final months, preventing him from working on another film set. And yet, Madadayo is both the work of an old man looking clearly back at his own life as well as the limits of his old age. It is both vigorous and calm. It's not entirely successful, a lesser work of a filmmaker who had made some of the great entertainments of the medium, but there's still something nice about it at the same time.

Hyakken Uchida (Tatsuo Matsumura) is a professor of German at a Japanese university who has decided to retire from teaching after the financial success of some of his writing during World War II. The opening scene is him saying goodbye to his current class using a combination of wit (that probably works better in the original Japanese with knowledge of German, but the English subtitles do their work to translate it as well as possible) and warmth that will become long familiar to the audience by the time the film is over. It's meant to do one thing: to make the audience understand how generations of students could grow to love him, and it works. Uchida is a charming, affable, and unassuming man who obviously endears respect and admiration from his students, and the movie entirely depends on it. Over-depends, to be honest, but it's still important.

Upon his sixtieth birthday he invites some of his favorite former students (all adults) to his new house to celebrate. This becomes a yearly event organized by the students, an effort to help cheer up their beloved former teacher after the house is burned to the ground in the firebombing of Japan and he's left to live with his wife (Kyoko Kagawa) in a shack on the property of a baron whose house was also burned. The students gather together their resources and go so far as to build him a new house, complete with a donut shaped pond so that Uchida's fish will be able to swim in any direction they want.

And this is where the movie feels weird and, ultimately, unsuccessful to me. The dedication of these students to their former professor is pushed to the limits in two extended sequences. The first is the idea to build him a new house. This is actually the more believable of the two events because it doesn't seem totally unreasonable that a couple dozen successful adults could pool their resources to give a beloved former teacher a small house. It stretches things a bit in my mind, but I can accept it. When combined with the second extended sequence, I'm at a bit of a loss.

Uchida and his wife have adopted a stray alley cat that they call Alley. We see the cat briefly in one scene where the students come to visit in the new home, and then the cat gets lost. Uchida is completely emotionally wrecked by the missing cat. I mean...it's all he talks about. He cries all the time. It's weird. It's so weird that I was expecting a point to it in regards to his character, perhaps something about him not having children, but no, that's all there is to it. It's a cat he had for a bit that wandered off. That's strange enough, but then the students get really invested in finding that cat. I mean...it seems like they have no other lives than to search for that cat. And it goes on for a while. I mean, I think about thirty minutes of this movie, in its latter half, is dedicated to this cat. I don't think it works.

The cat episode and the house episode end up feeling repetitive as well. They're both designed to show us how much love and kindness Uchida elicits from those around him, not just his students. There's the owner of the plot next to his house who refuses to sell the land when his prospective buyer decides to build a three-story house on it, effectively cutting off Uchida from any light. There's also the group of locals who come to Uchida's house at the false news that Alley has been found, all offering him presents and congratulations for the finding of his cat. Since we'd never seen either of these people before their respective scenes when they are kind to Uchida, it's kind of weird. In addition, the level of dedication the students have towards Uchida ends up feeling like something they should question when they're spending all of their spare time as they survey a bombed out area for a particular stray cat. Cut out the cat episode, and I think the film will improve a good bit, to be honest.

The finale is his 77th birthday, the 17th Not Yet Celebration, and it's warm and kind. We had earlier seen the 61st birthday, and it was the party of much younger men, including a singing line and some back and forth chanting between the students and Uchida that Kurosawa painted and made one of the original posters. They're markedly different celebrations, the latter reflecting back on a life while the first was a celebration of that much more life to live.

Without the cat episode, I feel like Madadayo would be a slightly directionless but nice end to Kurosawa's career. With it, the film feels too aimless for its own good to the point where it highlights its flaws too brightly. Maybe it's a cultural thing and this sort of dedication and deep emotion on somewhat trivial things is more common in Japan, but it's definitely not all that common in Kurosawa's work. Still, even without the Kurosawa connection, I'd be mixed on the film.

it's rare to find someone with the level of humility, warmth, humor and sadness of the professor...same for Kurosawa perhaps?

[Quinoa1984 · 10/10 · 6 February 2007]

At first I thought I would have to resist the sentimental clinging I expected for Madadayo, the final film written and directed by Akira Kurosawa (though it was not, from what I read in Emperor and the Wolf, necessarily his intended last project- then again, neither was Prairie Home Companion for Altman). But what can I say, except that maybe I'm a sucker for films that deal with a protagonist facing old age - done well, of course. In this case, Kurosawa decides to do a 180 from what he did in Ran, however still with the same emotional depths. If Ran was a plunge into the dark recesses of the human soul, where death and destruction (chaos as the title says) can occur, then so can there be joy and laughter and songs sung all for someone who can inspire a small quasi-community too. Sounds sappy, to be sure, but somehow Kurosawa is wise enough in his true golden years here to know that there can be a level of honesty, and a good level of fun, in dealing with potential problematic subject matter. I don't even know if I would recommend the picture to most Kurosawa fans, particularly the ones who dig into only his samurai films (the only inklings of death happen off-screen, to cats more than anyone else). But it struck a chord with me in a way only the movies can do.

The professor is Hyakken Uchida (Tatsuo Matsumara, his first film for Kurosawa), and he's based on a real professor, who wrote many books and was also much beloved in Japan. There's no real story here, per-say, at least when comparing it to the tight structures of the director's bulk of work. It's a series of vignettes showing how, upon retiring from teaching, his students become his best friends and most ardent supporters through good and bad times. This includes his home being destroyed during WW2, attaining a new home (and the problems with that, at first), and also in the most tragic section of the picture when he loses his cat. The latter of these almost had me in tears, which is a little crazy as I almost never (sans Umberto D) feel emotionally tugged and pulled over a pet problem in a story. But by this point in the film there's been so much that's happened in the side of sweetness and joy with Uchida- his yearly celebration thrown by his students that involves revelry and drinking and songs and all that- as well as the great bits of wisdom and nuance, that this comes as an unfathomable shock. And it's in due really to how Tatsumara plays it, how the character is completely believable in having this intense vulnerability on the flip-side of his kindness and humility, and Kurosawa's tact with this story in general. It ranks up there with the best emotional scenes in Ikiru.

But for the most part, Madadayo is a serene near-masterpiece of moods, and the primary mood here is that on the other side of despair, as Sartre once put it, life begins. Even through losing his house and seeing the rubble all around him, and the emotional crisis with the cat, Kurosawa's primary strengths here are in getting the little details perfect, the student characters that (perhaps a little underdeveloped) are totally indebted to the professor and love him like a kind of Sensai. The big 60th birthday celebration contains such little details sewn in, like the one character who wont stop naming the train-stations as everyone else around him sings and dances and gives speeches in revelry, and in its own minor-key way is like a supreme sequence to rank with Kurosawa's other major sequences in his films. There's also the little asides that show early on that Uchida is not just a conventional-lovable old man, but very intelligent and with an intuition that strikes to the core of matters. I also loved the moment when he says that if one isn't afraid of the dark, there's a defect in that person, without the side of imagination.

Meanwhile, Kurosawa guides this work of two-thirds happiness and one-third sorrow in a very personal tone, as if he meditated on each scene before going into the cutting room. Rarely does he falter in getting the emotional notes right, even the sappy ones, and he gets from Uchida a fully rounded performance. He also decides to leave his film- with children in Uchida's dream doing the 'Not Yet' game- with one of his most staggeringly beautiful compositions (maybe an all-time great closing shot too). As I mentioned, I'm not even sure if Kurosawa knew this would be his last film, but he makes it as a light-hearted, humorous yet serious tome on living peacefully, loving both people and animals (feel the chill in the room when the character mentions skinning cats), and it's enlightening in how facing death is shown as a sign of the ultimate, superlative strength.

A touching, melancholic masterpiece

[hier-4 · 9/10 · 8 April 2009]

A fitting conclusion to Mr Kurosawa's career. Full of quiet melancholy and contemplation this film is, in my opinion, quite aware that it is the director's last. It deals solemnly with death, love, admiration and loyalty. Madadayo meaning not yet, tells the story of a retired German grammar teacher whose small group of devoted students grows exponentially every year along with the parties and gatherings in honour of him. The silence in the film allows the relationships between the characters to become gripping and though there is little action the audience begins to care about the teacher as much as the students. The film also contains just the correct amount of humour to counteract the more melancholic, contemplative elements of the story. My only main criticism is that the segment dealing with the lost cat is perhaps just slightly too long. While contributing greatly to the pathos in the film I believe if this part of the film were shortened by a little balance would be restored between pathos and merriment.

A thoughtful, warm look at lifelong teacher/student relationships.

[mailken · 9/10 · 25 September 2005]

This is a beautiful movie. It is slow and deep rather than fast and shallow. It explores the relationships between a teacher and his students as he moves on from teaching to writing to retirement and they move into adulthood and parenthood. During this time they face the extreme challenges of World War II and its aftermath. But, at its core, the movie is not about the war. It is about the stability he presents to his students. He seems to behave in the same easy-going, confident manner, no matter how dire the circumstances. It is also about the way rolls eventually change: the students at first are nurtured by the teacher, but over time they begin to care about and then care for him. Most of us, or at least the lucky among us, have had good natured teachers that always seem to be able to get the best of their students. This is such a teacher. The scene depicting his 'foolproof' method for handling burglars is alone reason enough to watch the film. I recommend this movie and, if you like it, I recommend 'Ikiru' and the Japanese version of 'Shall We Dance'.

Episodic and overlong

[cherold · 5/10 · 4 June 2012]

It can be difficult to review a Kurosawa film. Many of his movies are clearly brilliant, a few are clearly poor, but a number are distinctive artistic visions that might work for you at one point in your life and not at another. Kagemusha, for example, was a movie I found terribly dull, only to watch it ten years later and find it brilliant.

But one cannot review a movie from the future, and in the present, I did not care for this one. It started decently enough, offering pleasantly humorous moments and an interesting eccentric as the protagonist, but the movie wanders through time in much too leisurely a way, built on a series of often mundane episodes, and by the halfway point I was feeling very restless, although not so much that I stopped watching.

It didn't help that I never understood the devotion of his students, who give him far more worship than seems reasonable. I mean, he seems like a nice guy, but he also seems like a bit of a kook. And the movie never shows you what he was like as a teacher, so there's no way to understand how his German language class made him so beloved.

Perhaps I'll watch this again in 20 years, to see if this movie is best viewed by old men, but for now, I didn't care for it.

The last of his movies is a timeless piece. Truly respect Akira

[maximkong · 10/10 · 18 November 2012]

A perfect final masterpiece which was amazing because it does not seem to be aiming for some sort of fame or breakthrough achievement, but is focused purely on presenting true Japanese culture, especially on the level of respect towards the elders.

I also liked the fact that this movie is very different from most of its peers as it does not project a melancholic, sentimentalized or negative perspective on the 'later stages of life' but instead every single character embraces life and death with profound down-to-earth humour. The Sensei continues to 'mentor' his ex-students with his unconventional wisdom and creative peculiar moments, and his own students not only accepted him for being eccentric but find him a powerful inspiration that does not fade with time.

What makes this movie timeless:

• The level of companionship, collective happiness and mutual feelings exhibited from 'Mada-dai' party will be one of the most memorable happy scenes from a movie that I will forever cherish. - A superb presentation of traditional Japanese culture: loyalty towards the elders, serene lifestyle, consideration towards other people, communial events etc that is, to date, stronger than any other movies I have come across (it even surpassed Omehido Poro Poro in this respect) - the role of Kyoko. Her silent, restraint but energetic and passionate acting performance provides solid support to the rest of the cast, despite a mere few conversational lines. The only thing lacking is the maternal aspect of her role as they did not bore children. - The lonely aspects of ageing: A large portion of the film was focused on the highs-and-lows involving their home cat, which also reveal sensei's vulnerability towards emotional wrecking. This is very realistic as they did not have children. - the students and the neighbour. I have never seen such commitment in they intended to carry out to help fulfil other's wishes. The neighbour's thoughtful decisions reflected the same attitude displayed by those in the aftermath of the Quake/Tsunami crisis today. - the sensei's unique outlook on life and his fire for living; I have watched way too many similar movies where the ageing, dying characters were overcome by the fact of death that they literally stopped living. - the songs or chantings were too good to forget

madadayo

[mossgrymk · 8/10 · 24 January 2023]

Maybe it's my MAGA aroused, anti fascist antennae at work here or maybe I'm just naturally skeptical of benign old men being worshiped by youth but I don't buy all the heart warming, sweet, gentle perfume my IMDB colleagues have sprayed all over this obviously anti Imperial Japan allegory. I mean, you've got an emeritus Japanese professor of GERMAN, during and immediately after WW2, who holds birthday parties wherein democracy is excoriated as corrupt while not allowing visitors other than his acolytes to the "temple" where he lives and naming one of his pet cats Kurz (the cannibalistic, humanity hating German in "Heart Of Darkness"). Don't know about you but I suspect more than a bit of authoritarian vinegar in the delightful geezer's makeup.

A Tribute to the Sensei Himself

[yadavanita-18093 · 9/10 · 4 May 2020]

Madadayo in my opinion is like the visual representation of the life and work of the Sensei Akira kurosawa himself. The character of the professor is like Kurosawa himself, seeing him throughout his career His love of teaching/filmmaking even in the times of war to cheer everybody up to having a polite personality. The cat 'nora' symbolises the Japanese film industry for which Kurosawa cared more than himself. WHEN 'nora' left he was shattered and even wanted to commit suicide. It was through the arrival of another cat i.e foreign aid like Lucas, spielberg, scorsese and russian cinema which helped him persue his love i.e. Filmmaking. His dream to die on a film set making a movie might never come but his teachings and his masterpieces will live long after his death. To everyone out there giving up on their dreams the Sensei he just says 'madadayo' - not yet.