Plot summaries of Hirokazu Koreeda’s Still Walking are invariably misleading. By nature a plot summary implies that the
narrative it sums up has a skeletal, reductive plot arc, and that every other
technical or narrative element serves to further the plot’s impetus. Many films accommodate such an Aristotelian
form, but Still Walking is not one of
them.
Rather than plot, Koreeda’s quiet film is about characters
and relationships. It is not even a
character study, but an observation of complex relationships. Despite being ultimately constructed and
fictional, the film mirrors as closely as a subjective construction can an
objective observation of a family dynamic.
Unlike more traditional narratives, it does not accommodate quick
categorization of characters. None of
these family members can be succinctly summarized any more than the film as a
whole can. No member of this family an
be encapsulated in a single scene, rather the complexity and weight of the
entire family’s history and imperfect communication becomes more apparent with
each passing scene. Passing judgment on any character becomes difficult and
rather irrelevant.
Brecht declared that Realism was determined by how, when,
and for what class a narrative was made.
Koreeda is said to have made this film to voice his sentiments after the
death of his mother. Such an exploration
of the pedantic side of grief, blunted but not extinguished by time, creates a
very universally applicable mirror, a very democratic tool for any viewer to
look into and see shadows of themselves and people they know. Other than a brief epilogue, the entire film
takes place within 24 hours, with no overtly important events occurring within
that span. The most definitive event
relative to what we see is the death of the Yokoyama family’s oldest son,
Shunpei 12 years prior. By temporally
removing this observation of life from the event that defines it, and by
temporally restricting us to one day’s interactions, the film forces us to
focus on the nuances of the interactions of the living family members in order
to find meaning or understanding in what we see.
Interestingly, Koreeda includes the cinematically neglected
demographic of the elderly, another element making this film more reflective of
reality. Certainly the aging parents Kyohei,, the reluctantly retired doctor,
and Toshiko, the powerhouse of domesticity, are the center of the relational
dynamics in the film. Their quirks of
old age are perpetually counterpointed by moments of unexpected passion or
softness. Their grief at losing their son is still palpable, but their very
lived-in home is visually filled with ghosts of all three of their children as
well as their younger selves.
The film embraces prosaic moments and never hurries them
along. There is a distinct lack of
editing-out or pacing. Many things are
allowed to occur in real-time with a minimum of cuts or angles. We see people
talking with their mouths full, and we listen to complete conversations that do
not arrive directly at their destination, if they arrive at all.
In this sense the film is very Brechtian in its purpose and
its relationship with its audience. But
it also embodies the preservation of life by a representation of life discussed
by Bazin. Especially in the many prosaic
details of Toshiko’s food preparation, the film captures a copy of real living,
in a way even more immediate than a still photograph. Despite it’s inevitably subjective,
constructed nature, the film attempts in earnest to look at a high-fidelity
version of reality from the outside, establishing and revealing relationships
through the observation of physical interactions within the frame. We begin to see how these people spend their
time, how they choose to self-edit in different company, and what worries they
carry around with them.
Bazin said that true realism recognized the need to give a
significant expression to the world both concretely and in its essence. So many
of the minute, concrete details captured in this film accomplish both
ends. They both serve as a near-perfect
mimesis of the actual events that occurred in front of the camera,
representative of a billion domestic chores accomplished quietly around the world,
and they serve to capture the essence of the reality Koreeda is attempting to
represent: the complex organic microcosm that is a home, filled with dynamic
memories and complicated by countless previous interactions. The moments when that essence is most effectively captured are electrifying forays into the potential of realism.
There is one very Renoir-esque shot when Ryota, Yukari, and
Atsushi arrive at the Family home. The
shot begins after we have seen Toshiko head to answer the door. In a long, deep focus, static shot we see her
answer the door, see the bustle of everyone removing their shoes, and then
eventually see everyone leave the frame to continue further into the
house. The shot itself is remarkably
like-life. If we, a viewer, were
standing in that spot watching those events transpire we'd have a very parallel
image to ingest. There is no
expositional dialogue in this scene, but by viewing it in this less-altered way
we are able to identify the nervous energy in the interactions, the nuances in
the fronts put on by different individuals in front of certain others, and a
terrific sense of the space this is all transpiring in.
At one point Ryota, the surviving son complains, ""Normal," everyone keeps using that word." As much as anything singular, this may well
represent the essence of the film. There
is no attempt to draw out the extraordinary, or to create or resolve conflict
in this film. It is largely an
observation of “normal” that allows us to contemplate how loaded, complicated
and fragile “normal” can be. Brecht
talked of how realism changes the hunter into the quarry. Rather than hunting for a satisfactory
catharsis, the viewer is invited to engage with this film as a quarry. To dig and sift and hold on to what
resonates. This exploration of
characters without an agenda of how the audience should judge or interpret them
was especially evident in Kyohei and Toshiko.
Their characters seemed to become more rich and complicated as scenes
passed. Kyohei started off seeming
rather broodish, but as he somewhat helplessly watches his neighbor taken away
in an ambulance his sense of contradiction and fallibility is palpable. Toshiko seems initially to be a
power-nurturer, but when she admits to wishing she had someone to hate for her
son’s death, and to intentionally causing anguish for the awkward young man who
was saved at the expense of her son’s life, she becomes remarkably human. She, and the entire Yokoyama family, become
so very real. The film is about real
life, real grief, real death, real aging, real disappointment, and real relationships.
