The Makioka Sisters

Japanese director Kon Ichikawa (1915-2008) said he was glad he waited until late in his career to film The Makioka Sisters(1983) because, he explained, if he had filmed it as a young man he wouldn't have had the humility to do it justice. It's a masterpiece of rare polarities, serenely charting the profound upheavals decorously convulsing Japan at the time the film opens, in 1938, and for a few years later. Its arc is grand, but its scale is intimate as it charts the lives of four sisters of a once-rich shipbuilding clan floating through what's left of the grace and refinement of their world and their dwindling inheritances. In most hands, this realization of Junichiro Tanazaki's novel likely would have settled for glossy soap opera. But the understanding and maturity Ichikawa brings to its epic intimacies elevate it to the level of The Cherry Orchard, Chekhov's great last play about aristocrats being shoved aside by societal and industrial reshufflings. Few are the films that make color itself one of the characters. Ichikawa does, with a master's hand, sparingly but, when called for, with a vividness that explodes from the screen with virtuosic boldness. It starts with a panoramic tableau of Osaka's cherry blossoms in bloom. By the time the opening credits have rolled, they have changed from a delicate pink-edged white to eruptions of bold magenta. Later, a display of heirloom kimonos, assembled to choose one for a still unmarried sister, flap demurely in a breeze like dazzling flags of beauty. We learn all we need to know of a married sister's husband's hopeless infatuation with his unmarried sister-in-law by the way he's transfixed by the perfect red "o" her lipsticked mouth forms. Ichikawa's color choices are rarer than beautiful; they put prettiness to startlingly illuminating uses. He makes color seem to stand for states of being. He reclaims cherry blossoms from travel-poster cliché just as surehandedly as he uses splashes of color to electrify mundane domestic incident. At the outset, when the sisters still are nourished by their past, cocooned in it, still radiant with promise, their fullness is echoed by the freshness of those cherry blossoms in spring. By the film's end, the blossoms return, falling, colors muted, played against elegiac images, especially of one sister whose impending marriage leaves her brother-in-law desolate with unrequited love, sitting alone in a blue pinstriped suit, in the lotus position, emptying little ceramic bottle of sake after little ceramic bottle. The costuming reflects the worlds they straddle, these four sisters, two of whose husbands have taken the Makioka family name and work as functionaries in a bank and department store, respectively, while all four dignified, sheltered sisters seem born to the traditional kimono and obi, and the obi had better not be so new that it squeaks when they move. Part of Ichikawa's strategy is to keep surprising us as he draws us into the sisters' shared life. As new imperatives impinge upon their genteel world, they do not always smile and bow to the inevitable, even when they seem to. The oldest, and surrogate mother, Tsuruku (Keiko Kishi), has lost the legal right to dispose of her inheritance. By law, her husband is in charge, and they all resent his sale of the family business, even though he explained that it was losing money. When he's transferred to a banking post Tokyo, he doesn't feel he's in a position to say no, but it comes as a blow to Tsuruko. When, after agonizing, she consents, he falls to his knees and kisses her hand. Her sisters, upon hearing the news, put their heated differences on hold and feel Tsuruko's pain. The sisters are all, in their ways, strong personalities, and it's amusing to see how all four go about getting their way while outwardly respecting the conventions in their corner of a still highly-ritualized society. When Sachiko (Yoshiko Kasuma) walks in on her husband embracing her younger sister, Kukiko (Sayuri Yoshinaga), she flees to another room, squeezes a vegetable to a pulp, and stuffs it into her mouth to keep from screaming. Kukiko, meanwhile maintains control of her life by turning down suitor after suitor at a series of increasingly funny deadpan tea ceremonies designed to allow the families of the prospective bride and groom to look one another over. You can't help but agree with her turndowns, especially when she's about to be served up to a man from a department of natural resources employee interested only in breeding fish. In one way or another, Yukiko makes life more difficult for all her sisters. Her choosiness is a roadblock to the youngest, Taeko (Yuko Kotegawa), the most modern, the most independent, and the least willing to let her family make decisions for her. Taeko looks more Western more often than her sisters. She wants to leave and open a doll factory. Ichikawa slyly lets us see that the dolls she designs and makes are little analogues of her sisters and herself. Meanwhile, Takeo's impulsive love affairs with a jeweler's son, a photographer, and a bartender do not go smoothly. Yukiko avoids answering the telephone; she's a little afraid of it. Not Taeko. She's the shocking one, but the demure Yukiko is more than a match for her. Yet it's to Taeko's departure that Ichikawa attaches the most visual impact and contrast. The Makioka house is, by Japanese standards, large, handsomely furnished and colored in the muted tones of old wood - the better to set off the swirls and touches of vivid color all the sisters favor. The last time we see Taeko, she's wearing an electric blue sweater, and a steel factory looms over her modest dwelling. Not that she shows any sign she's been consigned to reduced circumstances. And although we see a greater than usual number of men in uniform at the Osaka railroad station when Tsuruko and her banker husband, Tatsuo (Juzo Itami), depart for their new lives in Tokyo, the world of the film is singularly untouched by the escalations of WW II, except for a newspaper blown around in a street at night with a headline about the Japanese army invading Kwangtung (now Guangdong) on the south coast of China, and a throwaway mention of a servant's brother killed in action. The Makioka Sistersis the kind of film in which big, dramatic gestures would seem vulgar and out of place. Yet Ichikawa's mastery of circumscribed, intense, revealing behavior lets us feel, metaphorically, the earth constantly moving under the sisters trying to salvage what they can of the evanescence of their shared and beloved past. The only wrong note is the music. Ichikawa ran out of money, had to compromise, and it shows, or, rather, is heard. Handel run through a synthesizer and overlaid with a guitar doesn't do it. But everywhere else, the cumulative impact of Ichikawa's circumspect gestures is enormous. For more information about The Makioka Sisters, visit The Criterion Collection. To order The Makioka Sisters, go to TCM Shopping. by Jay Carr

Kon Ichikawa, the acclaimed Japanese director whose best work such as The Burmese Harp, Ototo and the documentary Tokyo Olympiad earned him international awards and further elevated the strength of post war Japanese cinema, died on February 13 in Tokyo of pneumonia. He was 92. He was born on November 25, 1915, in Ise, Japan. Ichikawa built on a long standing fascination with art and animation when, after formal schooling, he moved to Kyoto to work at the animation department of J.O. Studios. Working his way up the studio ladder, he eventually made his first film, a 20 minute short called A Girl at Dojo Temple (1946) using a cast of puppets. He spent the next few years working on small, but well-received features such as Endless Passion (1949), Stolen Love (1951) and Mr. Poo (1953) before scoring a breakout hit with his moving, sweeping epic The Burmese Harp (1956). The film, about a Japanese soldier (Shoji Yasui) who becomes a Buddhist monk and devotes himself to burying his dead comrades, was acclaimed for its strong humanity and meditative tone. It won the San Giorgio Prize at the Venice Film Festival and put Ichikawa on the map as a major talent. Ichikawa would continue his solid streak throughout the '60s: the devastating, often horrific war drama Fires on the Plains (1959), the moving family drama Ototo (1960); a fascinating look at Japanese male virility in Kagi (1960, a Golden Globe and Cannes Festival winner); the strong social document The Outcast (1962); the gender bending An Actor's Revenge (1963); and his stunning observations of the 1964 Tokyo Olympics for Tokyo Olympiad (1965) which won a BAFTA winner for Best Documentary. Although he would never quite scale the same artistic heights of the '50s and '60s, Ichikawa, ever the consummate filmmaker, would continue to have domestic hits in his native Japan in a variety of molds: social satire I Am A Cat (1975); the pulsating period piece The Firebird (1979); the sentimental, but beautifully photographed domestic drama, The Makioka Sisters (1983); and arguably, his last great film, the samurai epic 47 Ronin (1994). Ichikawa was still directing theatrical and television movies well into his 80s and never officially retired. His last film was The Inugamis (2006). He was married to screenwriter Natto Wada from 1948 until her death in 1983. He is survived by two sons. by Michael T. Toole