It's Hirokazu-eda's movie, like a home-cooked dish.
Making dishes into shapes and flavors and creating the ultimate taste experience may not necessarily make them an authentic "home-cooked dish". Home-cooked food has no recipes, no standards, and unremarkable, and its uniqueness lies in the attachment that carries the tongue.
The same goes for "Never Stop". It was Hirokazu-eda's family films that always had this rhythm - there was no tension, everything was as smooth as water. There is no apparent conflict, and all fluctuations lie in the subtle expressions of the characters. Just like a miniature landscape, zooming in and focusing many times will evoke the emotional response of onlookers.
Cinema is the art of time. This kind of art can fold the vast space and time, creating an anti-causal beauty by chance; it can also stop time, just like Hou Hsiao-hsien's blank space, and strip off delicate faults from the extended time. The art of Hirokazu-eda is more simple, as if squatting down to the edge of a well and scooping a ladle of water. He doesn't seem to be interested in telling stories, he just records it in gossip, and puts the simple and sincere appearance of time on the screen.
If "Haijie Diary" and "The Thief's Family" still have a warm ending, the openness at the end of "Never Stop" is full. At the end of the film, many and grandmother recall the name of the sumo wrestler who accidentally mentioned when they were chatting, but forgot their name. This is one of the few tacit understandings, but there is no chance to confirm it with each other. Life itself is full of these little episodes, so small that a sigh can't even be called sadness.
Unless, unless they become eternal regrets—
"That was also you and me, unfinished happiness, ordinary regret."
Grandma wanted to take a car ride once before her death, but she always felt that the future was very good, and she took it at some point; Dr. Yokoyama calculated that he would not be able to survive for 20 years until a great-grandson took over his clinic, but he left earlier than he expected. The endless bickering and quarrel between the old couple, the seemingly impending love and family, turned to ashes in an instant.
But it is these regrets that are closer to the original appearance of life.
Just like home-cooked dishes sometimes have too much salt and sometimes are not cooked--the chefs of home-cooked dishes are not professional chefs, and they fumble and fry the food, and mistakes are inevitable day after day; people in life are not professional actors, Those romantic scenes will not always be staged.
It is Hirokazu Koreeda that represents a style of Japanese life aesthetics. Inside the film, he made every frame perfect, and outside the film, he made the audience re-examine every second of life. Everyday is art, and habit is a gift.
Even if the movie has an end, life itself is open. While it opens up countless possibilities to us, it stubbornly only plays the episode once. On the long road of life, we can become both dust in the sand and the big world under the microscope.
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