Author: Bryan Loomis
Maborosi is a remarkably assured debut film with a deft touch about almost everything it does. Long stretches pass with minimal dialogue or traditional plot development. It trusts the viewer to notice behaviors and distances between its characters, in their little remarks or body language. These liminal spaces are where the movie exists and thrives.
There's a thematic purpose to the form, too. This movie truly understands how grief can be isolating, and really bottle you up. Yumiko is struggling with her husband’s suicide and questioning why he took his own life, but she doesn't talk about it for nearly the whole film. However, we are also witness to all the information she gets about her husband’s death, so we are also questioning why it happened. The context we’re given and Makiko Esumi’s terrific performance gives us everything we need to know about how she is feeling.
The film is shot beautifully. It is shot with only natural light, and it is so intentional about the way it uses darkness to obscure parts of the shot and draw the eye towards the light. Shots linger for a few seconds longer than we expect, or in some cases even longer than that. We only hear about Yumiko’s husband's suicide by walking in front of a train, but the train is a constant presence in the city, and the camera lingers on it. Much of the movie is also set in a small village off the Sea of Japan, and the sea also becomes a persistent focus area, which becomes thematically important at the end of the film. Characters are shot almost entirely at distance, enhancing the feeling of isolation.
Yumiko and her new husband do have two actual conversations in the third act that address their respective grief, head-on. These conversations are what the film is building to, but there are no highlight reel moments here. The first one is shot at middle distance and is an argument while her husband is drunk, but voices are never raised. The next is shot at far distance after a lengthy slow sequence following a funeral procession. Yumiko expresses her grief and confusion over her first husband’s death, and her new husband tries to help her process it. The dialogue here is very strong.
Life often leaves us without explanations and without tidiness. We tell ourselves stories and create narratives around the things that have happened to us and process them so that we can move on. This film invites us into that process for its characters, giving us the breathing room to grapple with life’s sorrows and mysteries.
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