The Makioka Sisters
Director: Kon Ichikawa
Year Released: 1983
Rating: 0.5
Sluggish, annoying depiction of four sisters, their grudges against one another and the politics involved with trying to marry off the two younger ones to respectable men. At the risk of sounding more churlish than usual, I can only say that midway though this 'soap opera' I realized that it's really a poor imitation of Yasujiro Ozu's pictures, who covered a lot of the same ground about Japan's State-of-Change but had the advantage of making his movies during those times: this can't help but seem like an after-thought, except without Ozu's sense of humanity. At no point was I ever especially 'drawn to' any of these figures, and watching them play out their issues is like watching fish at an aquarium: you can tap on the glass, but it has no effect.
