La rivière de boue

I started watching this movie around noon yesterday... and have been watching it over and over and over, hoping that the ending would miraculously change, if I just watched it one more time...

Only Akira's SEVEN SAMURAI comes close to this!

(Guys: if you are in the doghouse for whatever reason, watch this with your Signficant Other... you wil be forgiven by her for whatever you did!)

This film never seems to have been released, on VHS or DVD--WHY? It won several awards when it came out, and it's director is well-known. Was it ever released in Asia on any home video format? This is TOIO GOOD A FILM to be so forgotten!! This film reminds me of--yes--many other films about childhood--"Whistle Down the Wind" is another film few people remember. This film was released in 1981, yet it's setting in post-WWII Japan makes it seem timeless--especially the use of black and white throughout, and the strong ending. But there are many subtler asides--the one father's seeming allusion (as a Japanese war vet)to war crimes they were forced to commit in China ("we did all the dirty work") and all this still overlain with the aura of nostalgia and childhood "mystification" make it a very powerful and subtle film. I wonder if the social criticism and allusion to war crimes are what has kept it out of home-viewings release and in total obscurity for the past 25 years?!?!

Muddy River is in many ways an excellent film. It has an earthy, empathetic, and unfiltered connection to the human struggles of post-war Japan. In an establishing scene, a child sings the type of obscene ditty that we know kids have always sung (here I'll call it "Grandpa poo"). Physical wounds are healed for some, psychological ones clearly remain. Later in the movie when a newspaper headline announces, "The post-war period" is over, the noodle shop proprietor's face reveals a deep reluctance to move on from this grief.

The overarching storyline of Muddy River concerns two families on either side of a muddy river on the outskirts of Osaka. A noodle shop owner, his wife and their child who all live on the premises, and a prostitute and her two children who arrive in a houseboat on the other side. The children from both sides hesitantly interact and share experiences, even though the boat mum appears to have gone through this dynamic before and is pessimistic about the possibility of sharing problems and mutual consoling due to her profession.

The film reaches moments of incredible poignancy as it broaches themes of illness and dying, but the sensitivity of these scenes, which rivals that of Ozu and more, is marred by creative missteps. Firstly thee crabs are dipped in paraffin and set alight, they cringe and writhe in agony as a result, and secondly the film has a sentimental attitude to war in Manchuria. This war was an aggressive, unprovoked and genocidal war, characterized by the almost obliteration of Oroqen and Hezhen ethnic groups, and by atrocities that are unfathomable in their cruelty, including human vivisection without pain relief and deliberately promoting epidemics. It is not enough to characterise this episode as one of nostalgic Japanese loss of comrades, as embodied by the singing of melancholic and misguided war songs, "our friends lie buried under rocks in the fields. It was only yesterday...sad yesterday...that they charged bravely against the enemy and gave them their just deserts." No Japanese soldier handed out any just deserts in Manchuria, rather they imposed a cruel and insane reign of terror.

Muddy River is a compassionate slice-of-life movie from post-war Osaka that suffers from blind spots. The film's attempts to illustrate Kiichi's developmental damage through animal suffering create a profound disconnect between empathy and ethical responsibility. The positive reception of the movie highlights the risks of engaging with arthouse material superficially. If a film fails to change the way we see the world or help us recognize moral wrongs, but instead invites passive indulgence in an aesthetic of empathy, it ultimately fails in its mission.

This flawless movie, directed by Japan's Kohei Oguri, is one of the half dozen best films ever made about childhood -- the others are FORBIDDEN GAMES (Fr), 400 BLOWS (Fr), THE NIGHT OF GTHE HUNTER, SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE (Fr), PIXOTE (Brazil), RUNNER (Ir), THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL (Czech) and THE CROW (Czech).

An intensely moving and naturalistic study of a poor family living on a permanent river barge, its central focus is the friendship of two children.

The atmosphere Oguri conjures is nothing less than amazing and all performances are peerless.

See this before you die.

While there are many movies a child is the lead, this one is outstanding. You can empathize the children recalling your own childhood. The children here are not necessarily cute. But from this movie, you can see real sensitivity of children who feel social contradiction in their bones.

It is set to Osaka 10 years after the end of the WW2. Japan had been tremendously broken down in the war, but had miraculous recovery after it, thanks to the Korean War. Osaka is a metropolitan which has resumed prosperity and growth.

The noodle restaurant owner in this movie looks poor, but at least they can manage daily life. They and their customers had survived the war, and had worked very hard to resume the life. This couple's attitude to other people around is always warm. They accept the children from the "kuruwa-bune" (prostitution boat) without prejudice. They pay a visit to the husband's former wife at the deathbed and show their son. Everybody had such inherent, pure heart, and those who are left from the rapid economic growth kept it.