Influence & inspiration: World cinema

International Award Winning Film 'Memories of Matsuko' 

I watched this a couple of days back and thoroughly enjoyed it. This film is brilliant in in so many ways. I hadn't planned to watch TV at the viewing time but I caught a glimpse for a few minutes of interest and I was completely indulging from there on.

It was the 'visuals' that got and kept my attention throughout the film. The film language very fascinating and eclectic. Amazing cinematography, editing, animation and sets... The narrative was very captive, thought provocative, quite fragmented and non-sequential in system of story revelation. It brings together many interests I have tried to explore throughout my research practice on course here at UEL. It tackles and explores issues such as identity, alienation, hardship, survival, love, confidence, moral importance, communication as well as languages in different forms of translation within the film and to the audience. It also questions fortune, choice and repercussion exhaling imaginative notions throughout the context.

 To view movie trailer: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7EiEGI96pBY

Synopsis:

The story begins with Sho cleaning out the remaining belongings of his recently deceased aunt Matsuko. Sho gradually learns many details of his aunt's life, and it is through his investigations that the audience learns the story of Matsuko's past.

In the early 1970s, Matsuko was a popular school teacher. However, when one of her students (Ryu) committed a theft, and Matsuko took the blame for him, this had terrible consequences for her life.

The film also reveals some details of Matsuko's earlier life, including troubled childhood, when she struggled to gain the attention of her father. Matsuko's father's affection was mostly dominated by her chronically ill sister, which created an imbalanced rivalry where Matsuko's needs were less likely to be met.

Matsuko's relationships with men were generally troubled as well. She moved from relationship to relationship with men who gave her some inkling of affection, though it was often accompanied by abuse. She often found herself abandoned by the men she loved, who couldn't cope with her neediness. She continued to pursue her dreams of perfect love, even as her life spiraled down, and she found herself working as a prostitute, and even imprisoned.

When Matsuko met later in life with Ryu, whom she saved from the charges relating to his theft, she found that he held affection and admiration for her. She saw in him another chance for true love. But Ryu, by this time, was deeply entrenched in a criminal life. He decided that it would be best for him to disappear from her life, to protect her from the risks of life with a gangster. This final abandonment was disastrous for Matsuko, who never knew to what extent she impacted the lives of the men who loved her.