Analysis of Still Walking

Still Walking is the title of a bittersweet drama that reflects on a family’s memories of sibling rivalry, the need for love and appreciation, and the mysteries of death. The director, Hirokazu Kore-eda, proves that people can find shelter and transform a space into a place regardless of Bachelard’s conventional definition of a home. The movie takes place predominantly within the house, especially in the kitchen. From the beginning, two women prepare food to honor the oldest son, Junpei’s death. One especially memorable scene is when the whole family is eating corn tempura and exchanging memories with one another, one of the seldom times when the stolid Yoshio chimes in with laughter. During that moment, the whole family feels safe enough to share secrets and memories with one another, thus transforming the once geometrical form into a felicitous space. The grandmother’s dresser is another interesting space filled with memories that represents a centre of order, preventing the house from falling into disarray and therefore possesses an intimate relationship with the owner. The dresser seems to always be in the corner of every scene, subtly keeping the anxious family united. When Toshiko retrieves a kimono and presents it to Ryo’s new bride, she truly becomes a part of the family. Toshiko allows her to enter a place of security and presents the bride with a splinter of her overflowing dresser of memories. Not a single character opens Toshiko’s dresser but herself, showing how exclusively to her, it is an intimate jar of secrets and memories that only she can associate it with seemingly mundane objects. Another important moment in the movie is when a butterfly enters the room with the dresser and Toshiko convinces herself that it is Junpei. Her imagination allows her to daydream, to shelter herself from the pain of her son’s death by fooling herself that he has once more returned to her. Everyone disregards her conviction, but Toshiko is cocooned in a place where she can daydream, which to Bachelard is the chief benefit of a home. Bachelard describes how drawers and chests are intimate objects where secrets and dreams are held. When Toshiko pulls out the album from drawer and begins flipping through the book with Ryo’s new bride, Toshiko unconsciously begins to divulge secrets. When they discover an essay that Ryo had written when he was younger, he runs into the room and snatches it away. They laugh about how sensitive he and his father can get, but they do not understand that it is not the piece of paper that is important, but the associations made with it. Only near the end of the movie does the viewer find out that the drawing was of him and his father as doctors. Ryo and his father have an unaddressed tension between them not only because Ryo decided to become an art restorer, but also because he married a widow. Throughout the movie, Yoshio abruptly excuses himself from family activities, receding to his room, the place where he feels most safe. Bachelard mentions how art reflects the essence of the soul. To Ryo, whether it was a conscious decision or not, his crude drawing symbolizes a dream that he once had, one that would have completely transformed the house’s atmosphere. Although his secret lies in his mother’s dresser, he is embarrassed to acknowledge that there was a part of him that wanted to follow in his father’s footsteps. Ryo, like his mother, daydreamed and exercised his imagination in his drawing, a phenomenon that the mature Ryo wants to disregard. The dresser remains a mystery because the camera never allows anyone to see what is really inside. The director forces people to exercise their imagination in a similar fashion as the characters and daydream about what else could possibly be stuffed inside the overwhelming place of memories.