My cousin has repeatedly recommended the "Family Suffering" series by Japanese national treasure director Yoji Yamada.
Starting from the first part of the series in 2016, this series has been updated annually to tell the story of various family storms within a japanese middle-class family with three generations of the same family.
Even the mainland has launched a remake directed by Huang Lei, but the disappointment is that the Chinese version is just a simple copy-paste of the original plot, but it has lost the essence of the original version.
So much so that everyone complained that this is not called a remake, this is a translation.
Seriously, if you shoot such a delicate and warm family comedy, you are probably the best at Japanese directors!
And just this year, the 87-year-old director Yoji Yamada once again told the audience a piece of sociological soul chicken soup behind the parents' short in a way that laughed and cried.
Family Pains 3 My Wife, Like a Rose, My Family Is Hard iii
The screenplay for the film is still written by director Yoji Yamada, and tells a conflict within the family in a light and witty way.
The story still revolves around the trivia of a large family of three generations in the suburbs of Tokyo, and the setting is somewhat similar to that of -
The movie version of "I Love My Home".
The film continues the original team of the series, starring Hashi Claw Gong, Yoshiyuki Kazuko, Satoshi Mufu, Aoi Yu and other powerful actors have returned to star.
In the first two installments of the series, the main conflict in the story is caused by the old father Hirata Shuzo, played by the old Japanese drama Bonabashi.
He is the head of the Hirata family, a typical stubborn father who is carefully cared for by his family but does not receive the true respect of his children.
In the end, because of his years of indifference and machismo to his wife, his wife wanted to divorce him.
Chinese often said: There is a difficult scripture in the family.
After solving the storm of divorce between his father and mother, the peaceful life of the Hirata family is still not long gone.
This time, it was the daughter-in-law's turn to run away from home!
Like the first two films, the first act of the film begins with the daily life of the Hirata family.
Every morning is the busiest time for hirata's eldest daughter-in-law, Shie (Yui Natsukawa), when her two sons go to school and her husband, Konosuke, who is busy with work, travels to catch a plane.
Therefore, Shi Zhi must prepare breakfast in advance before her husband (Masahiko Nishimura) gets up, and then wakes her husband up to eat.
Whenever the husband wants to travel to a long distance, the wife Shi Zhi also asks her husband for some living expenses in advance, as the daily expenses of the whole family in the days when the husband is away.
Sons sometimes ask their mothers:
Why is someone else's home a monthly pocket money that mom gives dad?
His son's question, Shi Zhi could not answer.
Because since she married her husband Hirata Konosuke, she has become a full-time housewife with seniority and small age, perhaps she has long been accustomed to such a state of life.
During the day, the retired grandfather Shuzo Hirata (Hashita Gong) can't stay idle, either to play golf with his old friends or go fishing, while his mother-in-law (Yoshiyuki Kazuko) with a wide range of interests also has to go to the writing class he signed up for.
So the whole family is left with Shi Zhi as a housewife.
She has no hobbies and pursuits of her own, and all her life revolves around Hirata, a big son.
Every day, he washed and cooked and cleaned up the housework, silently endured her husband Konosuke to inherit his father's bad temper, and worried about the old man who loved to drink at night, because he drank too much and could not find the way home.
However, due to an unexpected theft, it broke the peaceful life that his wife Shi Zhi had painstakingly maintained.
It was an afternoon before the incident, and Shi Zhi was still doing housework alone at home. Because of some exhaustion, Shi Zhi fell asleep on the sofa in the bedroom on the second floor.
However, when Shi Zhi woke up, he found that his home had been stolen by thieves.
After calling the police, after the police investigated and collected evidence, they also comforted Shi Zhi and said that the thief only stole some watches and jewelry that were not too valuable, and did not need to be too sad.
But Shi Zhi had bitterness in his heart and couldn't say——
In addition to stealing some worthless things, the thief also stole private money hidden in the refrigerator.
This is the private money that Shi Zhi has saved over the years, about 400,000 yen (about 25,000 yuan), and she originally planned to use it as an emergency in case something happened, so she never told her husband.
Originally, the theft of money made Shi Zhi feel quite depressed, but he did not expect that after her husband returned from a business trip, he did not say a word after hearing about this matter, and began to blame his wife.
He even blamed his wife disapprovingly, saying:
When I was sweating and trying to earn money to support my family, you were actually napping!
This made his wife Shi Zhi even more afraid to tell the truth, but what she did not expect was that her husband's sister Chengzi had leaked her mouth. Knowing that his wife was hiding money behind his back, Yukinosuke was even more furious:
You even quietly used the money I earned as private money!
Finally, in the midst of her husband's complaints, Shi Zhi chose to run away from home. Without this person who has been in charge of the housework, the Hirata family is also in chaos.
Because the mother-in-law Fuzi is not in good health, he can only go to the battlefield personally by his old father Zhou Zao and begin to carry out a "vicious war" with cleaning, washing, and cooking.
But the family did not know that chai rice was expensive, the old man was already old, and had never handled the housework, originally wanted to make a meal, but almost burned the house.
It was also after the wife left that the husband Konosuke and the old man realized Shi Zhi's difficulty.
However, daughter-in-law Shi Zhi did not have the intention of returning home, and the Hirata family had to recall the second daughter and younger son to the house again and hold an emergency family meeting...
The "Family Suffering" series seems to be nothing more than an absurd farce caused by internal family conflicts, but behind it reveals complex and heavy issues in Japanese society as a whole.
As the third in the series, the theme of Family Affliction 3 is in line with the previous work, and it is still based on quite universal social issues.
The first part of the series focuses on "divorce in old age", and then after the sequel to explore "no chance society (the old man died alone)", and the third part has an extra layer of gender equality consciousness than the first two episodes.
The perspective is aimed at the neglected "desperate housewives" in the family.
The film sets the protagonist as Shi Ede, the hirata family's eldest daughter-in-law, who originally had the least sense of existence. I say she has no sense of existence because—
This role is almost the same as that of married women in families in Japan and many Asian countries.
As a housewife, she has no independent life and personality, and can only teach her husband and children at home full-time, managing the trivial affairs of the family.
Ironically, it has never been recognized by the family.
As for the male protagonists in the film, Hirata father and son, the director consciously portrays them as a model for a large family typical of traditional East Asian society, with male power controlling everything in the entire family.
The old man is sloppy and stubborn, typical of machismo, while the son Konosuke inherits this character and shortcomings, and his temper is even more irritable and irritable.
They are like representatives of the contemporary straight male cancer group, adhering to the concept of "strong women and weak men", and stubbornly believe that as long as they control the economic lifeline of the family, they have absolute dominance over the family.
Therefore, the male power of the Hirata family, whether it is the old man or the husband Konosuke, always feel that shizhi's efforts as daughter-in-law and wife are normal.
When Shi Zhi proposed to learn dance, her husband would scoff at it, and after learning that the family had been robbed, the husband was even more angry.
He was not angry about the theft of the family, but because his wife had saved money privately, which made him feel that her wife had not obeyed his own arrangement. Therefore, when he is in a hurry, he will say all kinds of evil words to his wife:
Married, always an outsider!
But whenever this happens, his wife Shi Zhi only suffers silently, and then smiles in return, such a good temper is simply painful.
The most impressive scene for my cousin was:
Shi Zhi had long been accustomed to using honorifics and smiling at everyone in the family, so even when he wrote a confession to the police to describe the thief, he could not change this habit.
In the movie, the screenwriter borrowed the mouth of the young son played by his wife Satoshi Mu to express the general sadness of those Japanese housewives:
The work of housewives is not treated correctly, and it is brushed over in a sentence.
This seems to have long since become the "universal dilemma" of contemporary housewives.
It is not respected by society or respected by husbands.
Unfortunately, the movie doesn't give an answer.
Perhaps the director himself is well aware that this kind of bad thinking is deeply rooted in Japanese society, so in the end, he can only use the affection between families to resolve all contradictions, and the film has lost its due practical significance.
However, although the story of the film is not as profound and timeless as the first two, and the plot is slightly old-fashioned, my cousin still thinks that this is a good film that can let the audience experience the sweetness of life in laughter and tears.
If you can, my cousin sincerely hopes that Director Yamada will be able to continue to shoot this series!
I love this series so much!