Maborosi

Infobox Film
name = Maborosi


image_size =
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director = Hirokazu Koreeda
producer = Naoe Gozu
writer = Teru Miyamoto
narrator =
starring = Makiko Esumi Tadanobu Asano Akira Emoto
music = Cheng Kwan Ming
cinematography = Masao Nakabori
editing = Tomoyo Oshima
distributor =
released = Flagicon|Japan 1995
runtime = 109 min.
country = Japan
language =
budget =
gross =
preceded_by =
followed_by =
website =
amg_id = 1:135780
imdb_id = 0113725

"Maborosi", known in Japan as "Maboroshi no Hikari" (幻の光, literally "phantasmic light") (1995) is a Japanese film by director Hirokazu Koreeda starring Makiko Esumi, Tadanobu Asano and Takashi Naitō. Based on a novel by Teru Miyamoto.

Plot summary

Yumiko (Esumi) and Ikuo (Asano) are a young Osaka couple who had just received their first baby. One day Ikuo is walking along the tracks and is hit by a train. It seems like he may have done this deliberately yet there is no apparent motive. A few years pass. Yumiko agrees to an arranged marriage with a widower, Tamio (Naitô), and she and Yuichi (her son, now played by Gohki Kashima) move to Tamio's house in a rustic village on the Sea of Japan coast, shot on location in Wajima, on the Noto Peninsula.

A drunken spat over a bell Yumiko had given Ikuo just before he died causes Yumiko and Tamio to discuss their strong emotions for the late spouses. Shortly after, Yumiko follows a funeral procession and lingers at the crematorium, until Tamio arrives by car to pick her up, at which point she says she just wants to know why Ikuo killed himself. Tamio suggests that, like the will o' the wisps his father used to see at sea, perhaps something just drew him towards the tracks and away from life.

Cinematic technique

Drawing comparisons to works of Ozu and Mizoguchi, "Maborosi" employs static shots (using only two pans, both in Shikoku, one at the rice paddy, one at the crematorium) long shots (using only one close-up and one medium close-up in a shot-reverse-shot at Ikuo's factory in Osaka), long shots (the viewer almost never has a good look at the actors' faces) and low, "natural" (and therefore dark) lighting to create a mood of loneliness and sadness, rather than well-lit close-ups lain over "sad" (and loud) background music, as is common in TV melodrama. Koreeda also consciously, with one deliberate exception, shot Asano and Esumi in two-shots, side-by-side; since they both wear black and the shots are slightly underexposed, it's difficult to tell where one actor's body ends and the other's begins, creating a sense of personal closeness and oneness between the two.

External links

*Imdb title | id=0113725 | title=Maborosi
* [http://www.jmdb.ne.jp/1995/ds003140.htm at JMDb (in Japanese)]
* [http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/maborosi/ "Maborosi"] at Rotten Tomatoes

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