Memories Of Matsuko

Introduction

There's nothing that can sap my motivation as a reviewer quicker than a DVD-R, although some may welcome the brevity that results in my reviews. You can understand why it happens, even if you don't agree with it, especially that paranoia that surrounds would-be piracy. More often than not as it is in this case, it's a lack of suitable and timely PR material. There's also a variety of DVD-Rs that you could receive, neither of them truly helpful or representative of a final release product. Either the movie is cut down, shorn of all extraneous material, just to fit on a single layer disc, or the studio, in an misguided effort to be helpful, compress everything down beyond the point of diminishing returns, to fit on that self same single layer disc. The Memories of Matsuko disc that I received was one of the latter, and with over three hours of video on it, I felt as if I was watching a VCD (remember those?). Note: If the retail disc isn't dual layer, just say no. Unfortunately, there are other problems…


Sho Kawajiri is a failed musician who left the family home two years previously to find his fortune in Tokyo, and who has done nothing much since then. It's July 10th 2001, and his girlfriend has just dumped him, when his father turns up with a container of ashes. He had never heard of his estranged aunt Matsuko, but she has just died. From what his father tells him, she had a promising career as a schoolteacher, an angelic voice, and everything going for her, when an incident in school got her fired, she stormed out of the house and was disowned by the family, and they lost touch until she was found in the park thirty years later, beaten to death, a vagrant old bag lady with nothing to her name. He tells Sho to go clean out her apartment, but as Sho starts going through his dead aunt's things, he's drawn into her amazing and eventful life.

The Disc

Have you still got a 4:3 television? Memories of Matsuko gets a 1.85:1 letterbox transfer, with burnt in, zoom unfriendly subtitles. I e-mailed Third Window Films to check, and they confirmed that these were the materials they obtained, and the film will be so presented on the retail disc. It looks like a postage stamp on a widescreen set. You get a choice of DD 5.1 and DD 2.0 Japanese in terms of audio.


On the disc you'll find the Making of Matsuko, a 30-minute documentary with the usual behind the scenes footage and plenty of interviews with the cast and the crew. The Film To Storyboard Comparison actually offers a little more than the usual such featurettes, with some clips of rehearsal and filming, offering more of the stuff in between the storyboard and final film. Finally there are a hefty 13 trailers, averaging 2 minutes apiece, with more of Third Window's far eastern catalogue.

Conclusion

It's Amelie, but in the real world. Matsuko is the young idealistic girl, giving of herself and warm hearted, but from the beginning, life deals her deuces. She's the emotionally neglected one in the family, seeing everything revolve around her bedridden and frail sister. She tries nevertheless to earn her father's love and his pride. She has an angelic singing voice, and a promising career as a schoolteacher, but she gets sacked after being framed for a theft committed by one of her students, and when she unwisely tries to protect him. And so we follow her on a downward spiral through life, a series of poor decisions, abusive relationships, prostitution, prison, sheer bad luck, it could be an episode of Eastenders. But through it all, Matsuko manages to keep a positive attitude, to pick herself up and stride forward, head held high.


It's all seen through the eyes of Sho, who investigates his aunt's life, and learns of some larger than life exploits, and of the effect that she had on the people around her. It could easily have been the most depressing sort of kitchen sink drama, but director Tetsuya Nakashima turns it into a piece of Technicolor whimsy, a bright neon fairytale tragicomedy, where the unexpected is rife. After being beaten and then left bereft after the suicide of her writer lover, she becomes the mistress of his lesser talented rival. What better time to have a musical number with animated bluebirds whistling accompaniment? Sent to prison for murder? The perfect moment for a hip-hop montage of self-betterment.


The Memories of Matsuko is a delight of visual insanity. It's sad, funny, scary, joyous, uplifting, a mini-epic of a movie. It follows Matsuko through thirty years of her life, and it's a bumpy ride. At 2 hours and ten minutes, it's a tad overlong, and it does sag in the middle, but it also manages to engage all the emotions, and delivers an experience that makes you feel all the better for watching it. It's visually inventive, has a great soundtrack, and moving performances from a talented cast. It's no surprise that it was the hit of the Japanese Academy Awards. Memories of Matsuko is a film that deserves to be seen. I just don't feel that it deserves to be seen like this. It may be worth playing Russian roulette with a couple of Region 3 e-tailers in search of an anamorphic disc with decent subtitles.