Still Walking

The Yokoyama family gathers for the anniversary of their eldest son's death by drowning twelve years earlier. The film covers those twenty-four hours: food is cooked, remarks are placed, and nobody says the thing that matters. Kore-eda wrote it out of his own childhood and the death of his mother, and said so plainly on the Blu-ray commentary, that much of the film though not all of it came from there. The method supports it. According to his production notes, many scenes came out of rehearsal rather than the script, or were invented while shooting on location around Yokohama. Hiroshi Abe plays the surviving son Ryota and Kirin Kiki plays the mother Toshiko. The cruellest line in the film comes from her, and arrives with no warning at all. Rotten Tomatoes sits at 100 percent. Roger Ebert compared Kore-eda to Yasujirō Ozu, and the comparison has stuck to the film since. Who it is for: viewers who want what families do not say. Who it is not for: anyone waiting for something to happen. The film moves between a dining table and a kitchen and no crisis occurs.