FILM REVIEW
'Madadayo': In the Serenity of Old Age, He Gains a Moral Splendor
By A. O. SCOTT
kira Kurosawa's last film, released in Japan in 1993 and opening today at the Cinema Village, is the delicate, blithely sentimental story of a retired
teacher and his devoted former students. To call it a story may be something of an overstatement, since "Madadayo" has none of the narrative intensity or epic sweep for which Kurosawa is best known among American
audiences. The most dramatic and emotionally urgent passage in the movie concerns the disappearance of a pet cat. And though the film is set in a specific and eventful period in the Japanese past -- from World War II to
the early 60's -- it takes account of this history only obliquely, as a background against which the emotional subtleties of character become visible.
Most of the scenes take place in tranquil, orderly interiors, which seem especially fragile and precious set against the rubble and wreckage that lies outside.
The main character is Hyakken Uchida -- a real-life man of letters played by Tatsuo Matsumura -- whom we meet at the end of his career as a professor of German at a military academy, as he regales his final class with the mischievous
humor that is soon revealed to be his trademark.
Having decided
to devote himself full time to writing, the professor (or sensei, as he is addressed throughout the film, even by his wife, played by Kyoko Kagawa), installs himself in a modest house with his books and his writing desk. When two particularly adoring
students (Hisashi Igawa and George Tokoro) test the house's security (and steal their teacher's bowler hat), they discover that he has posted a "Burglar's Entrance" sign over his garden gate. (Later
he embellishes a "urinating forbidden" sign on a public wall with a crotch-level drawing of a pair of scissors.)
Allied bombs soon force the professor and his wife to move to a cramped, doorless hut on a burned-out estate, but the old man maintains his impish good humor and basks in the admiring solicitude of his acolytes, who organize
the yearly birthday banquets that provide the occasion for the film's title and give the movie its most memorable scenes. The assembled students, after offering tributes to the professor, chant "Mahda-Kai?"
("Are you ready yet?") To which he responds, "Madadayo" ("Not yet"), and then cheer him on as he downs an enormous glass of beer. And that's the movie: the portrait of a beloved man who
loves life and isn't ready for it to be over.
And "Madadayo," in spite of its quiet tone and deliberate pacing, has a similar effect. Its patient, precise camera movements and the painterly clarity of its visual composition produce an effect of serene, enveloping
warmth. Like the professor, Kurosawa, without undue fuss or ceremony, invites you into his world and puts you at ease in it. The selfless, unaffected love that the professor inspires, and the grace with which he receives
it are presented with a straightforward simplicity that becomes extraordinarily moving.
We don't learn much about Uchida's writing, his ideas or his students' lives beyond their relationship with him. Kurosawa is interested less in the psychological nuances of this relationship -- which he pre sents
as devoid of envy or obsequiousness -- than in its moral purity. At the Mahda-Kai parties, the men sing about "looking up to our teacher, thinking of our debt," and the words are as heartfelt and unironic as the
Vivaldi on the soundtrack.
"Madadayo," in its exquisite and respectful sincerity, stands out against both the cynicism and the maudlin excess that characterize so many recent American movies and perhaps this is why its release in this country
has been so long delayed. But the fact that it arrives posthumously -- Kurosawa died of a stroke two years ago at the age of 88 -- gives it a quiet, valedictory power. With its mellow, wry view of a man growing old, "Madadayo"
is also something of a counterweight to "Ran," Kurosawa's overpowering adaptation of "King Lear," made in 1985 and re-released last month.
One of the professor's students calls him "a lump of gold without impurities," a judgment that might extend to "Madadayo." It's not one of Kurosawa's great films; the compass of feeling is,
in the end, too narrow, the scope of human reference too restricted. But it is, within its own proportions, nearly perfect.
MADADAYO
Directed by Akira Kurosawa; written (in Japanese, with English subtitles) by Kurosawa, based on the book by Hyakken Uchida; directors of photography, Takao Saito and Masaharu Ueda; music by Shin'ichiro Ikebe; art director, Yoshiro Muraki; produced
by Hisao Kurosawa; released by Winstar Cinema. At the Cinema Village, 22 East 12th Street, Greenwich Village. Running time: 134 minutes. This film is not rated.
WITH: Tatsuo Matsumura (Professor Uchida), Kyoko Kagawa (Professor's wife), Hisashi Igawa (Takayama), George Tokoro (Amaki), Masayuki Yui (Kiriyama), Akira Terao (Sawamura), Asei Kobayashi (Reverend Kameyama) and Takeshi Kusaka (Dr. Kobayashi).
