Still Walking
Please, please watch this film if you feel like you need a hug but no one’s there to offer you one.
It juxtaposes simple, silent routine with a complex tragedy that has impacted all of our presented characters to some degree and way. I’ve never seen a film invite death to hang out with life so calmly. The film almost ensures our viewers that death is an assured nirvana where beauty lasts.
Like Edward Yang’s film Yi Yi (2000), our directors do an amazing job at capturing empathy and we are left anticipating for a satisfying climax that blankets everything with fresh, clean sheets. Then it all comes too realistic, too immutable, and too still. We realize that this anticipation was meant to be instantly abandoned, and that the journey mattered, not the destination. This notion can be cliche in a verbal examination, however the conscious behind this through a practical application lacks abundance, and Still Walking is made to remind us that we shouldn’t expect solace in the mere ending, but that time, by the second, gives us oncoming chances to repair shattered pieces of a broken past that needs dirty fixing and attention. Time is always there as long as we are also. We should spend it wisely and honestly where we keep to our promises and find familiarity and comprehension in the moment. Still Walking not only tackles the importance of time and the chances it gives us, but the scary reinforcement that if time is left uncared for, it will present us with distasteful un-expectancies, creating a paradox of discomfort where we are living in our minds and the past more than our essentially simultaneous utilization of both imagination and reality, and the present. Daydreaming can be good, but can it come to a point where we lose any sense of the present moment’s eminence?
Aside from time, we’ll also have to examine the morality in both blood kinships and special relationships. We see people pushing others away whether it’s by ignoring them or standing distant from them. The ghost of Junpei, our fallen eldest son, acts as an unbreakable wall between our characters, where he is there but not given attention to in a way that is superficial. His ghost stays concealed, hidden, and silent, but is definitely withholding the influential power to strain his family bond and perception of reality. As seen with the heartbreaking scene of the mother believing he’s been reincarnated as an allegorical, yet-indifferent butterfly. This scene further represents how we feel the need to lie and delude ourselves from reality, believing in something that feels right but isn’t true. Because, truth be told, reality is an adamant beast that rarely submits to us. With our mother and the general family observed, we are forcefully more sympathetic towards the patriarch heads of the family. The father, and son, who has his own effected family. The father is seen unbothered but definitely chained, sticking to his conservative beliefs and seeking no interest to cut the past out like an irritating infection. For he can only cure bodies and their pain, but not the pain of the past. The son, on the other hand, is more open to discussing the tragedy but only around certain people, specifically the women, and in further specifications, his sister-in-law-turned-wife and mother. He grieves and feels his elder brother’s weight thrown on to him, but he preserves his personality and charm to further preserve his biggest responsibility’s innocence and optimism; his son. I also feel deeply for the survivor that Junpei died over as he can be seen with extreme survivor’s guilt and how the elderly parents are using him as a tool to fill their own inadequacies and guilt. Observing the morals the family possesses, we see it is important to be open for uncomfortable discussion that can at least prepare in advance, a member’s positive attitude.
The scene of the family gathered around the table, eating food and talking so normally, really made me feel that the director behind this has no interest in romanticization. Just pristine efforts in pushing through each second, and that record player can be exemplified that we can indeed cling on to the past in positive ways, such as memory-ridden music. The whole house-setting and environment reminds me of my personal times when returning back to my home country, at my Grandmother’s house, realizing that the best of times have a consciousness behind it, especially if it’s a tedious, everyday routine, and it’s so much more special when shared with loved ones you don’t see usually.
Life is short but it’s the longest thing we’ll have; so if you’re in time, you’re in life, and you should always continue to do things you like and are able to do but only if you enjoy and want to and it can be something as simple as walking, but if you keep doing it, you’ll realize how special it really is and that you should take pride, spiritually and somatically, that you’re still walking.
Overall, a great film, covering the concept of time, family, traditions, grief, and attempting to move on when there’s a haunting past that is habitually hunched on our back, itching to form into oneness with our skin, only initiating its plan to control our soul. A deeply cozy, personal, and nostalgically warming film that has definitely succeeded in being able to never leave by my side, as I hope to keep it at all times.
If you’ve read this whole review from start to finish, I actually love you and offer hugs back to you! 💙