Mr. Thank You (1936) User Reviews

Arigato!

[boblipton · 7/10 · 24 October 2019]

Ken Uehara is Mr. Thank You, the young bus driver on the route from a small fishing village to Tokyo. He carries messages for the people on foot, buys them records in the city, shares their gossip, and when he comes across people on the road, he honks his horn, and greets them with a cheerful "Arigato."

Hiroshi Shimizu's early talkie film gives us a tour from a small fishing village and the long road that runs between the mountains and the sea. He also gives us glimpses into the people: the girl being taken into Tokyo by her mother to be sold to a brothel; the pompous insurance salesman; the cynical woman who cadges cigarettes from him, shares her liquor with her fellow passengers -- except the insurance salesman, and the people on the road, who cannot afford his bus, but know he is a friend. It's a fine little portrait of country life, with a village strung out the length of the road, where everyone knows everyone else's business, and everyone is kind to each other -- except those people in the roadster who keep passing the bus with never a thank you.

A film that changes the world

[cruizca · 6/10 · 18 November 2020]

Mr. Thank You tells the story (based on the work of Yasunari Kawabata) of Arigato-san (Ken Uehara), a friendly bus driver who drives from the mountains to the nearest train station. But the interesting thing about the film is not the trip, but what happens inside the bus; in this microcosm, a totally new and different way of looking at society can be seen.

The film is set in a context of rural exodus, in which villagers travel to Tokyo in search of opportunities. Each character has a story, a character, and a purpose, which makes the interactions that take place on the trip very rich; like the woman who, while flirting with the driver, puts everyone in their place.

But among all the passengers on the bus, Shimizu highlights the story of a girl (Mayumi Tsukij), who travels to Tokyo with her mother to be bought there. In just 76 minutes, the director is able to establish an emotional, though not direct, relationship between Arigato-san and the girl. Will our good-natured protagonist buy the girl?

But what is most striking about the film is the clean way it looks at Koreans. In a context of Japanese authoritarianism, considering Koreans as just another worker is something totally revolutionary.

Mr Thank You is a movie to take into account. Perhaps not because of its aesthetics or its plot, but because of the way it looks. A look capable of changing the meaning of the above, in which the bus, make no mistake, is nothing more than an excuse to look at the whole world.

Interesting look into Japan's past

[parkergirl · 8/10 · 14 March 2017]

This was the first movie of Shimizu Hiroshi I have watched and it left a good impression on me. The story seemed simple, but the scenes were well-executed. The film offers the viewer the chance to hop on Mr. Thank You's bus and drive through Japan's breath-taking countryside while listening to stories of people from all walks of life. It was very interesting to see how Japan looked like in the 1930s as well, far from how it looks like in modern times. All in all, a simple, lighthearted film that I would want to re-watch from time to time.

Deceptively simple: a modest masterpiece

[Tryavna · 9/10 · 30 April 2012]

Like Sadao Yamanaka and Mikio Naruse, Hiroshi Shimizu is one of the major Japanese directors whose work has been overshadowed in the West by the popularity of Mizoguchi, Ozu, and Kurosawa, even though his films are every bit as good as theirs. Whereas Naruse's reputation has benefited in recent years from several DVD releases in the U.S. and U.K., however, Shimizu's films are still relatively hard to track down. The release of four of his films by Criterion's Eclipse label helps, but at least four more films have already been released on DVD in Japan and deserve distribution in the West.

"Mr. Thank-You," as this film is known in the West, is a perfect introduction to Shimizu's work. Like Ozu's films, it is bittersweet in tone, though with perhaps a little more emphasis placed on humor than on pathos. But Shimizu's camera is far more mobile than Ozu's, so stylistically, it has a bit more in common with Naruse. The other two reviewers have already summarized what little plot there is: the film is basically a "road" movie, in which an assortment of middle-class and working-class characters travel from a rural community to Tokyo. As the film progresses, each character's personality reveals itself, and a small, short-lived sense of community develops. Whether or not that sense of community will continue after the film ends (due to a budding romance between the bus driver and a young female passenger who is being sold into prostitution because of family debt) is pretty much the only source of suspense or plot. Nevertheless, as a slice of life, "Mr. Thank-You" is nothing short of magnificent. Shimizu's humanism is evident in every frame of the film, with each character, including the bit parts, emerging as three-dimensional people with very real concerns and aspirations. This is a film you watch for the character development and for the loving treatment the director, writer, and actors give them.

As a side-note, Shimizu's importance as a voice of dissent during Japan's militarization and as a link between pre- and post-war Japanese cinema is apparent in the short interlude between the bus driver and a female laborer he offers to give a free lift. The female laborer is Korean, and Koreans were perhaps the most marginalized people in 1930s Japan -- their country having been colonized by Japan and their people reduced to ill-paid, migratory labor. Giving such sweet and tender treatment to this character's plight gives some indication of Shimizu's true feelings toward Japan's imperial expansion and reveals that there's a lot more going on in this film than might first seem.

Location of the Film

[ButaNiShinju · 6 December 2015]

From the references in the film, it is not hard to infer this takes place in the mountainous southern end of the Izu peninsula (part of Shizuoka prefecture). The towns of Yugano, Kawazu-onsen, and Shimoda (mentioned in the film), are all in this area. The railroad (then as now) runs up the eastern side of the peninsula, so the bus is taking passengers from the relatively isolated western side across the Amagi mountains to the eastern side. From the configuration of roads, we can deduce that the starting point of the journey was probably the town of Matsuzaki.

In the film, this picturesque journey feels a very lengthy one. On the modern paved road, the entire trip today takes about 40 minutes by car.

Riding The Bus

[crossbow0106 · 9/10 · 5 April 2009]

This is a simple premise about a bus driver dubbed Mr. Thank You because he always thanks people when they move to the side of the road to let him pass. Everyone he knows likes him and many say thank you back. This story is mainly about the people who get on the bus headed to a train. One is a mother and daughter, the mother only going so far to say goodbye to her daughter who is presumably being sold (this was the Great Depression, when things like that happened). There is a mix of people on the bus with different reasons for being there and they forge a relationship one might have if they were all going on a bus tour. You see some of the countryside of Japan, some of which is pretty even in black and white. It was a grim time for the world then and this film, while having a bit of light comedy, also has some sadness. As the film went on, I was more interested. Mr. Shimizu, as far as I'm concerned, can be mentioned in the same breath of the titans of Japanese film, like Kurosawa, Ozu, Mizoguchi and Naruse, as well as others. If you're interested in Japanese film, you owe it to yourself to buy the box set that has this film, which was just received domestically. Mr. Shimizu was very adept at capturing everyday people as they were living their lives. This is a triumph.

Slight, but pretty good

[zetes · 7/10 · 24 May 2009]

Nice little Japanese comedy. Mr. Thank You is a bus driver who often brings people from the country to Tokyo. As he drives along the narrow dirt roads, he profusely thanks the farmers and such who move to the side as he passes them. At one village, he picks up a 17 year old girl and her mother. The girl is being transported to Tokyo, where her mother will sell her into prostitution. It's the Great Depression, and the family can no longer afford to support her. Over the course of the trip, Mr. Thank You becomes more and more aware of the girl's sad face. The rest of the bus chat amongst themselves, drink, smoke, whatever. The film runs about 80 minutes, and, honestly, is pretty slight. The titular character and the young girl are rather dull people. A couple of the other passengers are more interesting, but they also are generic types of people (e.g., modern woman or stuffy businessman). It's funny much of the time, and well filmed. I like seeing the Japanese countryside and its people. Japanese films of every era focus way too much on just Tokyo that it's easy to forget the rest of the country.

Outstanding!

[net_orders · 8/10 · 24 April 2016]

Viewed on DVD. Poor restoration. A film you don't want to end! This is a charming, engaging, and ultimately mesmerizing gem from director's Hiroshi Shimizu's canon. The title is the name given by the locals to a uniformed (right down to the traditional white gloves), exceeding polite, and exceptionally considerate driver of a small bus that connects country folks with the outside world. "Thank you" is a salutation the driver never fails to use when walkers allow his bus to pass on narrow dirt roads. They typically respond with "Thank You Mr."). It's only a dozen or two miles that are traveled, but a lot can (and does) happen during this particular trip. A time capsule of rural Japan in the midst of the Great Depression (circa 1936) and the director's conception of its inhabitants. The driver is quite sharp looking in his uniform, has the eye of all the women (both off and on the bus), and is a humanitarian and psychologist as well as a competent wheels man. Comedy (there are some hilarious one-liners not lost in the subtitles), poignancy, sadness, optimism/hopefulness, and a myriad of other emotional facets are provided by a group of talented (and engaging) character actors. It's remarkable how quickly the viewer is empathetically pulled into the characters' slices of lives without fully realizing it. The hallmark of a great story teller! Interestingly, no one seems to pay for a bus ride. Sound is sub par and artificial even by contemporary standards--the film seems to have been shot silently and later end-to-end dubbed (not unusual during the very early talkie days ((circa 1930)), but since abandoned in most of the West). The picture is relentlessly fuzzy which may be the result of having to use inferior film stock and/or a primitive printing process. But Shimizu rises above the marginal quality of the cinematic tools at his disposal to get his stories across! As for the restoration, it seems to have removed wear and tear as well as reel change-over artifacts, but should have worked A LOT HARDER at clarifying the image digitally. WILLIAM FLANIGAN, PhD.