Kaabei (Mother) (2008, Japan)

I think this film has gotten many international accolades, but being a foreigner in Taiwan, I haven't been able to get the hype firsthand. Basically, I saw the DVD at Blockbusters, got a good feeling from the case, and put it into my mental queue of films to watch.

I can do that, you know – touch a DVD to my forehead and get a vibe about whether it's good or not. No I can't, I'm just kidding. Sheesh, I really must have no sense of humor left when people can't tell when I'm kidding.

I just got a sense that it was a quality film, but knowing nothing about it, it wasn't pressing. It was a film to keep in reserve in case I saw a string of crap films, which is always discouraging, and this would be the film to regain my faith in watching films.

I was a little disappointed in one single aspect of this film – the final scene before the credits rolled, which I'm not going to spoil by opining further. Until then, I was thinking this was a great film, automatic 10 out of 10 tomatoes; if not in my top 10 films of all time, then easily top 20.

The film is about the struggles of a family in Japan in the years leading up to World War II, when the Japanese military government was increasingly intolerant of dissidence, and the father/husband in the family was considered a dissident. The title character's maternal strength sees the family through these hard times.

My primary bravo to this film goes to the classic narrative style. This film could be taught in film school for the simplicity of its narrative. If you want to tell a story using film, here is a basic, fundamental lesson in how to do it. How to deviate from it is the students' challenge.

From the start, the story unfolds scene by scene, characters are systematically introduced, and the story evolves in a very organic way. Of course, I'm oversimplifying. There's more to it than a technical exercise of how to roll out a basic narrative. But it's clear that the director thought through what he wanted to convey about each character as they're introduced, and thought through how he wanted to convey their attributes. Every character represents something in the outside world in those trying times (I was a little unsure what the sister/aunt represented, but then it hit me – Hiroshima, duh! She was exactly what she was supposed to represent).

It is a feel-good drama, so in that sense the film lacks complexity. There's something redeeming in all negative aspects that are represented. This could be seen as a fault, but otherwise the package is wonderful. And it's amazing that a film so filled with love, that only once are the words "I love you" uttered, and it's very quick and buried, I didn't even notice it the first time through.

The family has two daughters, 12 and 9 of age, and their characters were excellently written and acted. Too often child characters are incidental, but in this film, they have very defined and developed personalities, and they definitely help carry this film.

The film is narrated from the remembrance of the 9 year old, and it's funny how some scenes where intimate, personal witness would have been required, she had to be taken along for those scenes. Otherwise, how would she know those scenes happened? Really well thought out. Other scenes depicted where she isn't present can be attributed to being "public" scenes, not needing her presence in order to include.

So that last scene. For me to make this one of my favorite films of all time, the last scene needed to really sum up emotionally, it needed bring the film to closure while opening something up at the same time. It had to be that last look by Kay as the doors close on Michael Corleone getting his hand kissed as the new Godfather. It had to be the camera lifting into the air off the baseball field to show the headlights of cars streaming in from infinity. It had to be a 6-year-old boy saying last words at a funeral with a depth that none of the other characters could match or even imagine ("Yi-Yi").

This film just missed it. But that's just me, having such high expectations from the first 2 hours of the film. I'm sure many other viewers were caught up in the emotion and didn't even notice that it was wrong and petty and totally out of the character we might expect.

But for me, I dock the movie 2 tomatoes and still give it 8 out of 10 tomatoes. That's me harshly panning the film with venom for that last scene. Still highly recommended, even a must-see, but for now, not even in my top 20 of all time (21 perhaps). Although I don't preclude seeing it in the future and holding it in higher esteem.

Finally, from a historical perspective, it's always interesting to see how Japanese filmmakers are treating World War II. I think it's impossible for Japanese filmmakers to make a film that touches on WWII that isn't saying something. In that aspect, this film isn't at all groundbreaking. It's safe and unchallenging.