Memories of Matsuko: A Film Review

   1. ‘Memories Of Matsuko’

   2. Release: 2006

   3. Country: Rest of the world

   4. Runtime: 130 mins

   5. Director: Tetsuya Nakashima

   6. Cast: Miki Nakatani, Teruyuki Kagawa, Yusuke Iseya, Yusuko Iseya, null Eita

‘Memories of Matsuko’ by Tetsuya Nakashima (literally The life of hateful Matsuko) has been the best movie

I have ever seen ! –touchingly poignant, visually stunning, totally breathtaking. I guess all I can say is: ‘wow’!; a big bow to Tetsuya and his team. Comparing to Nakashima’s previous film :’Kamikaze girls’- which btw also made a big impression on me- that one is even better!

From the very beginning Memories of Matsuko mesmerized me with its unique style, interesting epic story and load of emotions packed it its content. Opposite to the American fairytales where the characters are always beautiful, rich, smiling, not complicated and live happily ever after the Japanese film takes totally different direction. The main characters are pretty and handsome too, the story is wrapped in the fairytale style at points as well but it is far from being a happy ending movie. Instead, we are following the life of Matsuko, which was filled with bitterness, pain and suffering. She devoted her life to look for somebody to love and be loved in return. However, she always ended up with the wrong men.

The story takes place in different places in Japan. The first scene takes us to Sho’s flat- a laid back and scruffy musician who just decided to give up his music

band; all he does is drinking, smoking, watching movies. One day his father appears and asks him to clean up the flat of his aunt who was just murdered. He stresses a couple of times that her life was meaningless so Sho does not have to shed tears for her. That is how he became interested in discovering the life of his dead auntie trying to find some values in it. At the same time we notice similarities between the lives of Sho and his aunt Matsuko, which might be a sensible lesson for him.

When tiding up Matsuko’s flat, he looks through all her stuff and then by the usage of retrospection we find out about her personal stories in stages. Slowly, we know more and more about Matsuko.

At the first glance we see a pretty and smiling girl from a good family. How misleading though! For she ended up as a prostitute, a girlfriend of mafia guy, always abused by men, in a word- useless. However, when you start enquiring about her story you will see the reasons behind these unhappy chain of events.

First, she was doing her best to get her father’s attention at home who seemed to care only about her handicapped sister. Then, when working at school as a music teacher an incident took place which changed her life forever. Fired- for took the blame for stealing money

from an inn keeper on herself in order to save her student who never admitted it was him-she starts her difficult track through life full of traps and obstacles. She was rejected both by the family-who was ashamed of her-and the society-who disgusted her. Thus, the literal title of ‘Memories of Matsuko’ is ‘The life of hateful Matsuko’( in Japanese) but the fact is she was not hateful at all. Everybody was wrong and Sho-her nephew-is the only person who is trying to prove it and finds out the truth.

All her life Matsuko is looking for is love and she never gives up on her search., even though she is so much unlucky…What is fascinating about her is that she hardly has any bad or negative emotions towards anybody. Having experienced so much pain still she seems to ‘give’ her feelings all the time not having anything in return. Men beat her, hurt her, abused her and she gave them back her unconditional love and constantly forgave them.

However, the voice of feminists might interrupt…for is being loved by a man the only purpose in life? I guess this concept is probably partly connected with the Japanese system where still sometimes women’s inferiority is being mentioned and that is something obvious for them. Thus, in Japanese eyes the failure of a woman is not to have a husband- whatever he is like; so he might be a very bad person who would cause a lot of troubles and pain but –according to the society- it is better to share your life with him rather than on your own. Otherwise, for the whole society your life is meaningless for women do not seem to mean a lot in Japan (still it is very conservative way of thinking). That is the only issue that I did not actually like but when blamed their cultural distinctiveness for that, makes sense.

Nakashima let his imagination go and created a masterpiece filled with marvelous colourful scenes that remind us that of a fairy tale, here dark fairy tale. He describes tragic situations in such a -sometimes funny- way that makes us both laugh and cry at the same time (tragicomedy). The director enchants the audience with the marvelous visual images in the movie. All details included, extremely interesting. After the movie you will find yourself with a jaw dropped, tears in the eyes and a ‘smile’ in your soul.

A sad and unhappy story of Matsuko is profoundly compassionate and profoundly touches our hearts. She was a good girl with all the best intentions but life turned out to be brutal and tragic for her. Her unshakeable will to love and be loved helped her survive in this hostile world, but when she does not find what she is looking for she gives up in the end, has no motivation to do anything, loses her hopes, just exists pointlessly.

The movie might be a very sensible lesson for all those judgmental society who express their opinions about others too hastily ‘Do not judge the book by its cover’… because the content might be of the most precious value…, or the opposite…