It's almost the New Year!
In winter, you can choose one or two warm dramas to see, the kind of harmless and warm dramas for humans and animals. It's not about anything, it's to decompress and warm your heart.
And recently, there happened to be such a drama that is very suitable, that is, "The Chef of the Maiko House".
After the show was broadcast, the Douban score soared to 8.8, and now although it has fallen somewhat, the score of 8.3 is also worth watching.
In every sense, this is a very "luxurious" new drama.
First of all, of course, is its extravagant lineup.
At the peak of creation, which was already known as the "Japanese master", it was Hirokazu Kore-eda who teamed up with Netflix to direct a pure Japanese drama.
The master ends, of course, everything is top-notch.
In addition to the eye-catching new faces Nana Mori and Natsuki Export, there are also the familiar Ai Hashimoto, Takako Tokiwa, and Arata Iura. and Hirokazu Kore-eda's familiar faces such as Masaya Nakagawa and Moyu Matsuoka (if you are interested, you can also pay attention to Yuki Mitani's cameo).
It was pleasantly surprised that the music of this drama was Yoko Kanno, who had not scored Japanese dramas for a long time.
After the disobedience of "The Broker", Kore-eda finally returned to his homeland, and also returned to his most familiar theme - everyday, and must be Japanese everyday.
This is also another "luxury" of the show.
Perhaps it is the weight of the big director that allows us to see the "daily stream" in the real sense of the "daily stream" in the streaming media environment where the setting, plot, and audio-visual of the TV series are becoming more and more "not amazing and endless".
It requires skill, rhythm, depth and engagement, and it is not a sugar water setting in a romance drama.
No matter how you look at it, "The Chef of the Maiki House" is right in the bullseye of Hirokazu Kore-eda.
This drama is adapted from the popular comic of the same name, and the story clue is very simple.
In the historic Hana Town of Kyoto, the residence where maiko are cultivated is called "Yagata".
The story follows two 16-year-old girls Kiyo and Pansy who came to Kyoto from Aomori to study art.
How to live with a bunch of strange apprentices, living in a house called "Shuo", embarked on two completely different paths.
One becomes a maiki, and the other becomes a housekeeper.
However, in terms of volume and content, compared with the straightforwardness of the original, Kore-eda has added a lot of details and layers, expanding the simple food unit.
Of course, these are what he is best at - girls, daily life, food, clothing, housing and transportation, bloodless "bonds", and a strong sense of fatalism in the context of Kyoto.
If you don't feel enough when you watch "Sea Street Diary" and can't wait to expand the audience into a Japanese drama, then this new drama will definitely satisfy you.
Sea Street Diary
But it has to be mentioned that the background of the maiko of this play is bound to cause a lot of controversy.
In Japan, it is known as the "walking national essence", but it has something bad in nature.
For this new drama, it is Kore-eda's strategy to deliberately shift the focus and greatly compress the parts of the original work about cooking and maiko science.
Rather, he tries to use the everyday as a background to carry out a "non-omitted" cultural export, showing how ideology rooted in centuries of history has entered the 21st century.
Priests who comb their hair and make kimonos, men who serve kimonos, and shrines where dancers perform.
Hyun Bin and Kai Laozo can both be table topics, McDonald's is adjacent to Yagata, and JK is passing by with kimono.
This atmosphere is what the show wants to present, so even if you despise the maiko culture, you will still be fascinated by Kyoto.
Therefore, the most intuitive thing about "The Chef of the Maiki House" is, of course, "eye-catching" in the literal sense.
Each frame can be used as a screenshot as wallpaper, and the pink girl makes you like the trainee who is new to the house in the play, only repeating "Beautiful girl!" sigh.
It can be said that Hirokazu Kore-eda, who is the grandmaster of the "Healing Department", did not hesitate to open a small class.
It is also recommended that all directors come to learn how to shoot well on a daily basis.
Calling this expression simply "healing" is, of course, a simplification of fast-foodism.
It is not the kind of lifestyle template sold by B stations, Douyin, and traffic dramas, but more like Japan's unique "air system".
"My Neighbor Yamada-kun"
In countless Japanese anime, there is also such a quiet but sad mood.
It is a great whirlwind day after day, without specific time, and in the daily time that circulates "in a circle without beginning and no end", it is specifically emphasized that life is "now".
In the play, the scene where Ji Dai becomes a cook and moves into the small attic is full of childlike taste.
It's a sense of flow that ends and ends, not sure where to cut off or where to start.
The first episode begins with snow country, red bean mochi soup, and opa sauce in an apron, and a lot of life details are embedded in the picture.
Neatly cut purple eggplant, okra with broken silk, plums marinated for three days to taste, and seasonal doors and windows.
A large part of the episode is devoted to showing "useless things" or "useless dialogue."
The old woman who appeared briefly talked about which konbu was the best to make soup, the girl who said good morning to each other across the balcony, and the baseball teenager who was silent in his hometown Aomori dreamed of entering Koshien.
In contrast, the characters' key dialogues are often observed, truncated, or drifted away.
When Ji Dai was likely to be eliminated and returned to his hometown, the camera was only watching not far away from the balcony, and the two girls only muttered two words.
"When?" "Next week", just by the way.
Don't focus on information, only on the situation, which is of course also the technique of the movie.
Several times the picture only looked at the back of the characters and went away, and did not catch up, and the line dialogue that was originally like in the ear gradually faded until it was silent.
After Kiyo was appointed as a house-shaped chef, two backs appeared on Hana Street, on one side was Kidai wearing fat short sleeves, and on the other was Pansy in a kimono.
Two forks in the road, and the seemingly eliminated side is bathed in sunlight.
The hidden connection between the front and back of the picture is far more important than the specific plot, the story has not changed, but the process has changed, and we don't have to worry about anything, just watch it.
The same is true for food.
The length is shortened, and it is not deliberately high, and good food will appear at the most appropriate time.
Farewell red bean soup, small sandwiches directly in the mouth of Maiko before taking the stage, fried toast that is necessary for small talk, and parent-child bowls that herald the New Year.
Without the expected exaggerated reactions and food reviews, or the food sensationalism that is already tired of watching, the director does not intend to make food change its life against the sky and turn his life upside down.
It is a small satisfaction, a small joy - because you are full to climb the mountain, sick to appetize, quarrel to break the ice, and eat delicious to feel that the world is not too bad.
Just like the character's evaluation in the play: "Jidai's cuisine is ordinary and excellent!" ”
This is also the meaning of the "air system", and there is a certain continuous philosophy in a spoonful of food and drink.
The entire group of characters is a faint appearance, and the camera is flipped and has its own destiny.
A film photographer obsessed with maiko, a mysterious uncle in a Flower Street Tavern, a professor of architecture who has a crush on his mother-san... None of them are superfluous, they are tools.
Among them, there is the friendship of men and women, the friendship of old and young, the friendship of lilies and the friendship of customers.
Under the main line of not being overbearing, it seems that nothing is said, everything is blended into the shape of the house, such as the treachery of people's encounters, but also the heart of love for "beauty" and the hope for tomorrow.
Therefore, just "eye-catching" is too simple for Hirokazu Kore-eda, and it is too pity.
"Maiki's Cook" does have the appearance of "sugar water", but its core, on a Netflix platform facing overseas audiences, is undoubtedly bold and unflattering.
What it intends to build is an "imagined community" that is both ancient and new.
This is no stranger to East Asian audiences, where the poetic environment of the culture and the subtle communication to the extreme are accurately captured.
It is precisely because of this that shooting this kind of excitingly quaint elegance makes people jealous.
It was Hirokazu Kore-eda who built a topographic map of Kyoto almost without a trace.
It is not a boring literary mirror, but enough time for the budding morning cherry blossoms and the streets of Kyoto that crisscross it.
The worship at Yasaka Shrine and the colors of the yukata, Mama-san consciously or unconsciously lamented the antiquated architecture when she walked.
The Ji Dai, who buys vegetables, sketches the longitude and latitude of the ancient capital built in imitation of the Tang Chang'an City like a humanoid navigation.
In the grand vista of countless retreats, quietly watching the hook of the falling snow, I don't know how many generations of Maiki's broken steps have been replaced.
This extreme implicit is placed in modern life as unpretentiously as possible by the director.
In the play, tourists have repeatedly stopped Maiko for group photos, and they have not shy away from letting K-pop elements such as Lee Di-hoon and Hyun Bin be terriers.
Takako Tokiwa and Arata Iura, who were visiting the park, hid under an oil-paper umbrella and whispered, and the confession sentence was "The moon is beautiful tonight."
In the final episodes, the director borrowed the mouth of the maiko senior, played by Ai Hashimoto, to say the singularity of the daily cycle:
"One session at a time".
Every time he performs, Hyakuzi who does the same action treats it as the first time, and in Jidai's view, the seemingly infinitely repeated cooking table also changes depending on the season and mood.
In Kyoto, where Kinkakuji Temple, Gion, and Maiko are the birthplace of Maiko, it is a time-space tunnel where "the generations of life are endless, and the rivers and moons look similar from year to year".
It is essentially the same as the photo with the maiko on a tourist's smartphone.
This feeling of lifting weights must be familiar to those living in the ancient city.
For example, in Gu Xiaogang's "Spring River Plumbing", the story is over, but time and space are not yet.
Those 300-year-old trees, thousands of years of mountains, and the Fuchunjiang River that attracted Huang Gongwang, Yu Dafu and others are still deeply involved in the lives of contemporary individuals.
"Spring River Plumbing"
Treating every moment as "one session and one moment" is the ultimate meaning of everyday images.
Of course, as a super-level "cultural export drama", we cannot avoid its beautification of maiko culture, and in addition to watching this drama, the disclosure of the maiko industry has been previously promoted, and everyone can also eat it together as appropriate.
However, I also have to sigh.
"The King of Dogs"
In recent years, whether it is Gong Jiu's "My Family Story" about Noh, Yamada Naokoko's "Heike Monogatari", Yuasa Masaaki's "Dog King" renovated masterpiece, or the Korean drama "Pachinko Game" telling the story of Korean immigration.
Coupled with this excellent quality "Maiki's Chef", such a cultural output is really enviable.
In short, in any case, after a year of hard work, you can also watch this new drama and heal yourself.