Rhapsody in August is a very small movie. It has little of Kurosawa's bravura cinematic flare and could well, from its look, have been made for television. Yet there is something rather lovely about this little thing.
The movie is about children staying with their grandmother who learn that she has a brother living in America. She doesn't remember this brother, one of many siblings, some dead, and the children, eager for a trip to California, try and encourage her to remember.
The grandma is lovely. The children seemed a bit unconvincing, speaking in stiff conversations and sometimes over-emoting, but maybe that's what children are like in Japan.
The grandma lives near Nagasaki, where she lost her husband, and the children do some downbeat sightseeing.
When I read user reviews of this movie, several were mainly just a description of the story, and I seem to be doing the same thing. I'm not sure what it is about this movie that makes one want to tell what happens, since really, not much does. It's an episodic film that is notable not for story but for lovely, quiet moments like the survivors of a school carefully tending the twisted jungle gym left as a memorial.
Perhaps one wants to tell the story because the movie is made up of little moments, like a search for a mysterious tree or ants crawling to a rose, that don't on their own seem to mean much and yet in the context of the film are striking.
There is something wandering about the movie, although since life does wander this may be a feature rather than a bug. Like the reviewers here, I don't know what to make of the final, overlong scene, and I would have preferred something else. But I am glad I saw this.
The movie is about children staying with their grandmother who learn that she has a brother living in America. She doesn't remember this brother, one of many siblings, some dead, and the children, eager for a trip to California, try and encourage her to remember.
The grandma is lovely. The children seemed a bit unconvincing, speaking in stiff conversations and sometimes over-emoting, but maybe that's what children are like in Japan.
The grandma lives near Nagasaki, where she lost her husband, and the children do some downbeat sightseeing.
When I read user reviews of this movie, several were mainly just a description of the story, and I seem to be doing the same thing. I'm not sure what it is about this movie that makes one want to tell what happens, since really, not much does. It's an episodic film that is notable not for story but for lovely, quiet moments like the survivors of a school carefully tending the twisted jungle gym left as a memorial.
Perhaps one wants to tell the story because the movie is made up of little moments, like a search for a mysterious tree or ants crawling to a rose, that don't on their own seem to mean much and yet in the context of the film are striking.
There is something wandering about the movie, although since life does wander this may be a feature rather than a bug. Like the reviewers here, I don't know what to make of the final, overlong scene, and I would have preferred something else. But I am glad I saw this.