This visually lush but sometimes ponderously slowfilm is a poetic saga of love and loss.
Maborosi(幻の光)
✭ ✭ ✭ ✭ ✭ Read critic reviews
Japan · 1995
1h 50m
Director Hirokazu Kore-eda
Starring 江角真纪子, Takashi Naitō, Tadanobu Asano, Gohki Kashiyama
Genre Drama
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A young woman's husband apparently commits suicide without warning or reason, leaving behind his wife and infant. Yumiko remarries and moves from Osaka to a small fishing village, yet continues to search for meaning in a lonely world.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
San Francisco Chronicle by Edward Guthmann
Kore-eda weaves these images and others, building a multilayered fugue that contemplates death, asks if mourning ever truly ends and addresses the ephemeral nature of love, family and home. Everything we value and use to define and frame our lives, he suggests, is always at risk.
ReelViews by James Berardinelli
Maborosi is a worthwhile movie experience not because it ventures into virgin territory, but because its presentation is so precise and unique.
Austin Chronicle by Marc Savlov
The concept of loss, and the sorrow that shadows it, is not what you'd call an uncommon theme in films, but rarely is it handled with such uncommon eloquence as it is in Maborosi.
Chicago Sun-Times by Roger Ebert
Maborosi is one of those valuable films where you have to actively place yourself in the character's mind. There are times when we do not know what she is thinking, but we are inspired with an active sympathy. We want to understand. Well, so does she.
The 33-year-old Koreeda, who began his career in documentary, has a gift for observing life as it's lived, accumulating simple, seemingly banal scenes into an unforgettable reflection on the frustration and helplessness of trying to explain the ineffable.
The New York Times by Stephen Holden
A pictorial tone poem of astonishing visual intensity and emotional depth.
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