Film review: The Little House
At one point in 82-year-old director Yoji Yamada's 82nd film, a woman introduces her boyfriend to American author Virginia Lee Burton's classic . However, this old-fashioned drama is actually based on Kyoko Nakajima's , which is also called in English.
THE LITTLE HOUSE
Starring: Haru Kuroki, Takako Matsu, Satoshi Tsumabuki, Chieko Baisho
Director: Yoji Yamada
Category: I (Japanese)
At one point in 82-year-old director Yoji Yamada's 82nd film, a woman introduces her boyfriend to American author Virginia Lee Burton's classic . However, this old-fashioned drama is actually based on Kyoko Nakajima's , which is also called in English.
The film begins inauspiciously, at a hilltop cemetery overlooking a crematorium. Among the people gathered below is Takeshi (Satoshi Tsumabuki), a young man whose beloved grand-aunt Taki (Chieko Baisho) has recently died. At his request, the elderly woman had set about writing her autobiography, and allowed him to read her work.
Shown in flashbacks, the youthful Taki (the younger incarnation of whom is played by Haru Kuroki) had moved from her home village in the "snow country" to Tokyo to work as a maid. At first, she works in the household of an eccentric novelist (Isao Hashitsume). She then becomes the domestic helper at the suburban, red-roofed, petit bourgeois home of toy company executive Masaki Hirai (Takataro Kataoka), his wife Tokiko (Takako Matsu) and their young son.
Although the film begins and ends with 21st-century scenes, most of 's story is set in the early Showa era, between the mid-1930s and 1945. And much of it takes place within the confines of a well-furnished home with an eye-catching mix of Western and Japanese styles.
But it's impossible to ignore that this was the time when Japanese forces were at war, initially with China, and then with the allied forces. Takeshi notes this when reading Taki's occasionally overly joyful accounts of her life in the house.
In 2009's , the octogenarian Yamada showed how terrible life could be for those who spoke against Japan's war with China, and its role in the second world war. Less politically involved and astute, the people living in "the little house" are unconcerned about external affairs; the womenfolk get more excited about the department store sales held to mark the Japanese capture of Nanking than the actual events taking place in China.
But over time, the negative effects of war come to be felt in their lives. For the most part though, relatively trivial domestic concerns and matters of the heart affect them much more, and memories of Tokiko and her husband's floppy-haired junior colleague Itakura (Hidetaka Yoshioka) are capable of causing Taki to weep several decades after they have taken place.
In spite of all the emotion, the affairs at the core of the film prove strangely unaffecting. The set design and aesthetic details are far more interesting, as are the political discussions that occur in passing. The latter could have provided the material for a much better movie.
