Tampopo

oh man oh man I really loved this film. At first, you think it’s pretty simple and I mean it does look pretty simple. It opens with a struggling widow trying to keep her ramen shop alive, where she ends up desperately asking two truck drivers for help. But, as the movie continues it gets more creative and layered in a way. What started as a simple film that anybody could have thought of, turned into a great story of mentorship and a sense of community. This shift throughout the movie made it stand out from the beginning. this movie also showed me the importance of networking. without the people tampopo met along the way, she’d still be struggling with her ramen shop like she was in the first couple scenes. If LinkedIn existed in 1985 she would’ve gone far. Another thing I liked about this movie was seeing tampopo change throughout the movie. In the start, she was very timid and embarrassed about her failing ramen shop and her ramen making skills in general. With the help of others she met in the movie, she becomes better not in just making ramen but in her own confidence and thoughts on herself. I also really appreciated the training scenes where Goro was grilling tampopo on how to make better ramen. It felt pretty sport-like which is not something you’d expect to see from a movie about ramen. Not even sure how they managed to make a near two hour film solely about ramen and still have it be interesting the whole duration. What makes this movie stand out is the structure. The movie begins a lot with tampopo’s story and just the story of her ramen shop, but switches occasionally to people and scenarios that are not directly related to the plot but are in a slight way. for ex, in the beginning of the film, when you’re getting use to the training that tampopo’s undergoing to learn how to make good ramen, the scene quickly shifts to a women’s etiquette class on how to properly silently eat spaghetti which the scene then quickly changes course, changing focus to a man abruptly slurping his spaghetti. As it’s not related to ramen itself, and in addition to many other scenes, the movie points out that you’re not just watching a movie about a woman trying to fix up her ramen shop but also an entire community interacting and revolving around food. I also really appreciated that this movie was centered around ramen. I am ramen’s #1 fan. america could never get something as good as tampopo as the movie would be about burgers, hotdogs, and Texan briskets. on the surface, ramen seems pretty simple but this movie makes it more complex which was really neat. in one of the first scenes, an old man taught someone else how to properly eat ramen, from observing the whole bowl before you eat, to the perfect way to slice and eat the pork. the way the film turned something so simple and made it complex in a way was unique. This film was pretty cool how it combined both playfulness and sincerity in a way that felt really natural. even though the underlying theme was about caring for others and their growth, the movie still majorly highlighted playfulness and just an upbeat style. At the end of the movie, which is different from what I would have thought at the beginning, it doesn’t feel like a film about ramen or ramen training, but rather people coming together and showing how a bowl of ramen can bring meaning back into someone’s life. overall, what I loved most about Tampopo was how it surprised me. It seemed pretty simple at first but ended up being complex with a lot of character background to it. Watching Tampopo grow throughout the story while the whole plot was fixed around ramen got me hooked from the beginning as well as made this movie a great first watch. I really liked this movie