A family gathers together for a commemorative ritual whose nature only gradually becomes clear.
Director:
Hirokazu Koreeda
From metacritic.com
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Title: Still Walking (2008)
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| Credited cast: | |||
| Hiroshi Abe | ... | Ryota Yokoyama | |
| Yui Natsukawa | ... | Yukari Yokoyama | |
| You | ... | Chinami Kataoka | |
 |
Kazuya Takahashi | ... | Nobuo Kataoka |
| Shohei Tanaka | ... | Atsushi Yokoyama | |
| Kirin Kiki | ... | Toshiko Yokoyama | |
| Yoshio Harada | ... | Kyohei Yokoyama | |
| Rest of cast listed alphabetically: | |||
|
|
Ryôga Hayashi | ... | Mutsu Kataoka |
| Haruko Katô | |||
|
|
Hotaru Nomoto | ... | Satsuki Kataoka |
| Susumu Terajima | ... | Sushi deliverer | |
Still Walking is a family drama about grown children visiting their elderly parents, which unfolds over one summer day. The aging parents have lived in the family home for decades. Their son and daughter return for a rare family reunion, bringing their own families with them. They have gathered to commemorate the tragic death of the eldest son, who drowned in an accident fifteen years ago. Although the roomy house is as comforting and unchanging as the mother's homemade feast, everyone in the family has subtly changed. Written by The Film Catalogue
Still Walking gives us a look into the lives of one ordinary Japanese family. The story takes place mostly in one day. It is not an ordinary day exactly, but one in which the family gathers together in remembrance. Gradually and naturally the backstory unfolds.
The way that the story is told is really what is so wonderful about it. I cannot think of any other film off the top of my head that tells this kind of a story so well. It seems so natural and the filmmakers make it look easy, but it's not.
The way the family interacts, the dialog, each character's little idiosyncrasies, it's all done perfectly and flawlessly. There a is a point near the beginning of the film where the matriarch tells a story of an interaction with her neighbors years earlier. The way the story is told and the other characters' reaction feel so real and lifelike.
Everything about the film feels like an ordinary family. Even though this family is in Japan, a country I've never visited, I felt connected to them while watching this. Everything was so relatable to the point that this could have been a real day in the life of a real family shot using hidden cameras.
The way the mother manipulated the daughter-in-law and dishes out underhanded compliments, the way they all tell boring stories that they've all heard a hundred times, the way the son is hesitant to leave his wife alone with his mother out of fear that she'll accidentally give away his little white lies that no one really even cares about but him...all of it feels just like real life, made even better by the wonderful acting from even the children.
And of course the camerawork is great. Everything is done extremely well here. I won't give away too much of the ending, which on its surface could be considered mundane, except to say that it is bittersweet and perfect.