Home Sweet Home
Director: Noburo
Nakamura
Year: 1951
Rating: 7.5
Coincidentally, this Japanese
shoshimin-eiga turned out to be a perfect film for Mother's Day. Shoshimin-eiga
being realistic films about the every day lives of lower middle class families.
The small victories, the small struggles and disappointments of life. But
they persevere, they have families, they do their duty, they watch their
children grow and place their dreams in them. They don't complain. They accept
their status. The family is the center of their lives. The father is responsible
for bringing home the money; the mother for holding the family together.
This film is a lovely example of this. Quiet, subtle, emotions kept below
the surface. Moving at times. Parents who love their children and never want
to disappoint them.
Perhaps it is a bit of a fantasy, but a
sweet one in which the family of parents and four children; two teenage daughters
and a boy and girl much younger all love one another, care for each other
and sacrifice when needed. They don't have much but they have each other.
It is a remarkable cast that pulls off what could be a sentimental soppy
film into a poignant family drama that you care about. Whenever the father
gets home from work the four children and his wife greet him and ask him
what he forgot. It is always something, an umbrella or his hat. He swears
off sake but the wife convinces him to have one. Then another. He is played
by the great Chishu Ryu of the many Ozu films he was in. The mother is played
by Isuzu Yamada, the Lady Macbeth figure in Throne of Blood. Clearly a very
different character here. Much of the film revolves around the mother and
her daughter Tomoko, played by Hideko Takamine, considered by most critics
to be one of the great Japanese actresses. Both she and Yamada are great
here. Tomoko has a boyfriend that she loves who is in a sanatorium with TB
which back then was usually fatal. She paints for him.
The family gets along. Money is always a
problem but they manage. The mother secretly sells off her kimonos and jewelry
to pay for things for the children. When things begin to veer off course,
it is the mother who manages to keep it all together, without a word of complaint.
She encourages Tomoko to paint no matter what, forgives her husband his small
foibles, is a rock when told they have to leave their home of years.
Directed by Noboru Nakamura. This is as warm as Apple Pie. Happy Mother's
Day to mine.
