Still Walking

Having a family is such a profound part of life and I can't imagine any other movie could show what it's like better than this one. The family in this movie is a normal one. They laugh together and make fun of each other and yet they're also unreasonable and irrational. For all their warmth there is an incredible cruelty. Taking jabs at how life has gone for all of 'em and only letting some of the vitriol out even though everyone knows how much there truly is. No one mentions it, that's just how family is. Then they go back to talking about living together and growing old, about how life gets at that stage. Stories from childhood and the struggles of marriage, dreams and failures and future hopes. There is laughter from the living room as the women work in the kitchen with a smile, and beneath all of it is so much inexplicable grief. Grief not just for a dead son, a brother, and a husband that they mourn but more that none of them can bear to bring up. This grief alone is so present in every single moment of this movie and it remains beautiful for all of it. I burst into tears 15 minutes into the movie, when nothing related had even happened on the screen, and continued to cry at points until the end. My dry ass eyes probably felt some relief the first time I started tearing up but by the end they were even drier, I could only sob. I couldn't even put into words what made it happen but I continued to randomly break into tears 20 minutes after the movie was over. It is touching in a way that only makes you think about how precious life is. This is the only movie to make my heart so heavy. It's gonna stay with me forever. Japanuary 2026 #2 (Hirokazu Kore-eda)