At the snow-capped Homai Station, Sato Etomatsu, played by Ken Takakura, is just like more than a decade ago, waiting for the train to enter the station, he sacrifices his primary responsibility as a husband and father in order to work, and every time the camera is given to Takakura Ken's face, it always makes people feel an indescribable feeling of suffocation.
The railroadman spent his life fighting for his post, neglecting his family, and perhaps the number of shifts and passengers at the station, which was covered in snow for most of the year, was getting fewer and fewer, and even his best friend, Senji, had to leave to make another living.
He is not an astronaut who travels through space, he is not a soldier who fights bloodily to defend his homeland, nor is he a dreadnought captain who rides the wind and waves, he is just a station commander in a station that is about to be abandoned, he is even just a "light pole commander".
Japanese Movie "Railroad Man"
It may be difficult for us to understand why such a seemingly worthless job could make him sacrifice his family, and in the face of dereliction of duty in the family, he seemed helpless, so he blew a whistle into the sky, as his old friend Xianji described: "Replace anger with flag waving, flute instead of tears, and cry with inner calling. However, from the perspective of Japan's national character, he is relatively in line with our inherent impression of extreme forbearance and restraint for the Japanese, as well as the principle of doing things, but they are rigid and lack flexibility.
In the play, Sato Etomatsu carries a certain paranoia and stubbornness, in his eyes, public morality is greater than private morality, work responsibilities are higher than family responsibilities, and the sentence : "This position cannot be separated from me" has become his motto. How should we look at this value, in the eyes of ordinary people, the purpose of work is to support the family, realize self-worth at the same time, so that the family can experience a better life.
However, the railroadman Sato Ethamatsu fell into a fallacy, we can imagine that when Sato Otomatsu did not appear at homai station, then the most serious consequence that could be caused was a train accident, but in the family accident and social accident, he chose the grand duke selflessness, which is the only way that can make him feel comforted and can use him as a self-forgiveness to numb himself.
Twelve years ago, Sato and his wife hatched a daughter, but the daughter, who had just been born, fell ill with a serious cold, and because Sato had to stick to his post, he did not accompany his wife to the hospital. In the end, the belated Sato sees the cold corpse of his daughter, what a cruel scene, whether it is for the railway conductor Sato Otomatsu, or the audience in front of the screen, the director uses the most ruthless way to throw this question in front of the audience.
There was only his wife and his dead daughter on the train on the honmatsu branch line, and Sato Otomatsu stepped onto the carriage, and his wife said to him, "Your daughter is dead, and you can still greet her with a flag."
Sato Otomatsu said, "There is no way, I am a railroad."
Shortly after his daughter's death, because he did not stay with his wife for a long time, the wife was always in the shadow of her daughter's death, and eventually died depressed. His remorse accompanied him throughout his life, and he was full of self-blame for his deceased wife and his dying daughter, but his loyalty to his work represented a certain justice, which could somewhat dissolve the guilt in his heart.
At the end of the film, Sato Oto Matsu meets his daughter who died prematurely, and the director uses a symbolic technique to let the daughter who has become a ghost, Yukiko, meet her father Sato Oshimatsu at the Homai Station, in the warm stationmaster's lounge, there is snow outside, Yukiko makes a pot of soup for her father, the two hold a hot meal, the picture is extremely warm.
In addition to Yukiko in the "third stage" played by Ryoko Hiromi, Yukiko of different ages has also met Sato Etomatsu for some accidental factors, but Sato Yoshimatsu was not able to recognize this as his daughter at that time.
Seeing such a warm scene, the audience and Sato, the ashes in their hearts were rekindled again, it turned out that Yukiko was not dead, which was probably the collective appeal of all the audience, people wanted to give Sato a chance, but also to give this broken family a hope.
But in the end, when Sato woke up from drunkenness, Yukiko had long disappeared without a trace, and although the audience was still willing to believe that the dolls on the desk and the hot soup still steaming on the dinner table were clues left by Yukiko's visit here, the author believes that this is just wishful thinking of the audience, and that night, after Yukiko left, people found Sato Otomatsu's body floating on the snow pile the next morning.
Daughter Yukiko said that night that the reason why she did not show her identity in the previous meetings was because she was afraid that she was a ghost and frightened her father, and her father's words did not know how many viewers in front of the screen were touched: "How can you be afraid, what parent in the world would be afraid of their children."
During the last few hours of Sato's life, he and his daughter reconciled, or rather, imagined her to understand and forgive what he had done. In his imagination, he apologized to his daughter Yukiko, who admitted that he had not fulfilled his father's and husband's responsibilities, and got a sentence from his daughter: "Yukiko doesn't mind at all!" After the comfort, he was redeemed from his heart, and we all know that in reality, Sato Oto had no chance to express these guilts to his daughter and wife, and perhaps could not get their forgiveness.
Once upon a time, he was a little apprehensive before he died, he was afraid that his wife and daughter would not forgive him, would not understand him, would not accept it, and the appearance of Yukiko that night cleared the way for him to go to another world to reunite with his wife and daughter, and finally he left the job he loved peacefully without any regrets, and left this world.
This Japanese film, shot in 1999, does not create a particularly large pattern for the audience, but only shows us the contradiction between work and family of an ordinary railwayman, in the final analysis, it is only a matter of career and family, which is lighter and heavier, and how to balance it. The subject matter does not seem to be new, but for this world problem, the director Kang Nan himself did not actually give his own clear answer, he just raised this conflict and contradiction to the level of life and death in an extreme way, to increase its depth, and throw this question to the audience without any responsibility.
This is a typical Japanese film, which is different from another type of healing film such as Kore-eda and Naomi Kawase, in which the director is not responsible for presenting the correct answer, nor does it use any external force to form a reconciliation, but only shows an extreme consequence to the audience, and reconciles with his own heart in a way that the character himself is self-paralyzed.
In the author's eyes, this movie may be Ken Takakura's best film, a good actor's excellent skills are not reflected in "put", but in "receive", as the driving school teacher said: "The driver who only knows how to step on the accelerator is always just stunned, and the driver who learns how to control the brake is the veteran." There is no doubt that Ken Takakura contributed his extraordinary acting skills in the movie "RailroadMan", he portrayed the hidden patience of the character Sato Ethamatsu in the film in the face of tragedy, and he controlled his emotions through subtle changes in his face, making the emotional performance of the parties extremely realistic.
That year, 68-year-old Ken Takakura, 24-year-old Masanobu Ando, and 19-year-old Ryoko Hiromi brought us a classic masterpiece that we will remember for a lifetime before stepping into the threshold of the 21st century.