Sometimes, perhaps
not advisedly, one might begin to make sense of a movie by thinking about its
title. There doesn’t appear to be anything in this screenplay that is
necessarily or uniquely tied in with
The principal subjects
are the four members of what we might describe as an average nuclear family. The story begins to unfold after we learn of
the “down-sizing”
of the father of the household. That is to say, in less euphemistic terms, he loses his job. Essentially,
while the glue that holds the family together seems fairly robust, each
individual has their own trajectory within the story. Although nothing in life
is ever “ordinary” when looked at closely enough (for most of us, the personal experiences
that make up our life stories seem to us “too high to get
over, too low to get under” despite how mundane and trivial they might
seem to others) a sense of the ordinariness of this family is established, which is important
so as not to overshadow issues that are subsequently raised in the script, which one
might understand as a commentary on Japanese life, culture, tradition, and identity
in international interactions.
Of course, being
ordinary is a relative concept, and the ongoing
depiction of the aforementioned Japanese family traditions and modes of behaviour contribute in large
part to the interest in this movie for international audiences, for whom little
of what they are seeing is, by their standards, ordinary. In point of fact, the
audience is seeing these traditions coming under scrutiny, as events concerning
modern-day
This movie is technically well put together, the scenes of the
night at the beach and the depiction of the piano performance are examples of some
of its best technical achievements. The cast perform well, both as individuals and as a collective.
For an insight into middle-class Tokyo, or Japan, as the case may be, this might be a reasonable place to start.