Jiro Dreams of Sushi

In an underground passage of a Tokyo subway station there is a restaurant that consists of a ten-seat counter: Sukiyabashi Jiro. Its owner, Jiro Ono, is in his eighties and has been doing the same work for over sixty years. The documentary describes not a day but a method: the temperature of the rice, the octopus massaged for forty-five minutes, apprentices not permitted to make the egg sushi for ten years. David Gelb directed his first feature. The restaurant holds three Michelin stars and is the only sushi restaurant with them. The real subject is not food but succession. Jiro's elder son Yoshikazu works beside him and cannot open his own place while his father continues; the younger son Takashi left and opened his own in Roppongi. The tensest passages are about Yoshikazu being unable to reach his own potential in his father's shadow. It screened at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2011 and had a limited release the following year. The real surge came when Netflix added it in August 2012. Who it is for: viewers who like documentaries about craft and mastery. Who it is not for: anyone wanting a critical portrait. The film presents Jiro's discipline as a virtue and only hints at what it cost his family.