The Family Game
| The Family Game | |
|---|---|
 Film poster | |
| Directed by | Yoshimitsu Morita |
| Written by | Yohei Honma (novel) Yoshinori Kobayashi Yoshimitsu Morita |
| Produced by | Yutaka Okada Shirō Sasaki |
| Starring | Yūsaku Matsuda Juzo Itami Saori Yuki |
| Cinematography | Yonezo Maeda |
| Edited by | Akimasa Kawashima |
Production companies | |
| Distributed by | Circle Films |
Release date |
|
Running time | 107 minutes |
| Language | Japanese |
The Family Game (家族ゲーム, Kazoku Gēmu) is a 1983 Japanese comedy film directed by Yoshimitsu Morita. It follows the story of a nuclear family of four whose stability is shaken by the appearance of an idiosyncratic tutor from a lower social background. It was the first major film by the director and is an example of postmodern cinema.[1] The film contains elements of black humor and social satire.
The Family Game is considered one of the greatest Japanese films of the 1980s by film critics. Kinema Junpo, the premiere film magazine of Japan, ranked it as the 10th best Japanese film of all time (in 2009), the best Japanese film of the 1980s (in 2018), and the best film of the year (in 1983).[2][3] [4] The film was also selected as the best Japanese film of 1983 by the BFI.[1] The movie missed the Japan Academy Prize for the Best Picture (losing out to Palme d'Or Winner The Ballad of Narayama).
Plot summary
[edit]The Numata family consists of the father, Kōsuke (Juzo Itami); mother, Chikako (Saori Yuki); and two sons, Shinichi (Jun'ichi Tsujita) and Shigeyuki (Ichirōta Miyagawa). Mr. Numata is a salaryman who is physically and emotionally absent. Mrs. Numata is a stay-at-home mom who is devoid of other relationships or hobbies and is emotionally drained from caring for her two teenage sons. Shinichi, the elder son, is in a first-rate high school and makes his father proud. Shigeyuki, the younger son, is nearing the end of junior high school and will soon be taking the high school entrance exam. However, Shigeyuki's grades are poor, and he is only interested in roller coasters. He is also bullied at school by a group of students.
The father, though emotionally absent, has very high expectations for his children - they must go to a top high school which must then be followed by a top university, etc. He finds a private tutor, Yoshimoto (Yūsaku Matsuda), for Shigeyuki and places all responsibilities for his exam on the tutor. Yoshimoto's behavior is strange, including kissing Shigeyuki and slapping him for his lack of effort. Even though Yoshimoto is a seventh-year student from a third-rate university, Shigeyuki’s marks improve significantly under his guidance. Yoshimoto also teaches Shigeyuki basic self-defense, which Shigeyuki puts to use against his primary bully. Eventually he passes the exam for the high school. At a family dinner celebration, with all five main characters present, a food fight breaks out and Yoshimoto begins to riot, throwing spaghetti around wildly, pouring wine indiscriminately on the table and hitting people.
Cast
[edit]- Yūsaku Matsuda as Katsu Yoshimoto
- Juzo Itami as Kōsuke Numata
- Saori Yuki as Chikako Numata
- Ichirōta Miyagawa as Shigeyuki Numata
- Junichi Tsujita as Shinichi Numata, the older brother
- Yoko Aki as Yoshimoto's girlfriend
- Jun Togawa as Neighbors wife
TV Series
[edit]The Family Game was adapted into a TV series in 2013 by Fuji TV, starring Sho Sakurai as the tutor Kōya Yoshimoto.
Themes
[edit]The film focuses on a dysfunctional middle-class nuclear family—each family member is connected not internally, but through the social roles they are expected to take on, and the pressure of these social expectations further accelerates the breakdown in their communication. Individual worth becomes quantified chiefly in terms of success and class ranking.
Morita associates various characters in the film with an object. Such as the father and his soy milk, the mother and her leatherwork, the tutor and his flora book, the older brother and his telescope, the younger brother and his spacewarp. Murakami Tomohiko argues that these associations are a filmic equivalent to the commodity catalogues in Japanese fashion magazines of the 1980s.[5]: 243
Japanese critics saw the film as showing the change to a new epoch and a post-modern sensibility. One said that if Japanese before and during the high growth economy defined their reality first though "ideals" and then through "dreams," and tried to change reality according to those visions, then in the post-high growth era, from the mid-1970s on, they no longer tried to change reality but to remain content with reality as "fiction." The Numatas' table is not unrealistic but fixes the "un-naturalness" of reality itself in an age when families watch television while eating. This epochal shift was marked, another critic said, by Morita's films and the works of novelist Haruki Murakami and musician Sakamoto Ryuichi, leading to a culture which celebrates meaninglessness.[5]:242
Last Dinner Scene
The five main characters celebrate Shigeyuki's success in his entrance exam with a sumptuous dinner towards the end of the film. The whole dinner scene is captured in an 8-minute static single take, which shows the characters looking towards the camera and seated in a single line on the table with tutor Yoshimoto in the middle, ala Jesus in the last supper. The dinner devolves into an altercation between father and older son and then a food fight ensues provoked by the tutor. Many critics have commented on this dinner scene as it is the most famous and iconic of the film.
Tadao Sato commented on the influence of Ozu on The Family Game. Ozu liked to seat family members facing the same direction in order to show the unity of their feelings. Morita deliberately makes use of this Ozu-esque device in the dinner scene. But in the new Japanese culture represented by the Numatas, the linear composition no longer means accord, and instead their seating in closed proximity results in conflict.[4]
Vincent Canby noted that the tutor acts like an "avenging angel" and shows the Numatas what he really thinks about them through his violence. He goes on to say, "This one-man riot is the humanist's only response to the genteel inhumanism we've been witnessing throughout the film."[6]
Reception
[edit]Vincent Canby, writing for the New York Times in 1984, praised the “extraordinary visual design” and also wrote that "The Family Game is so rich that Mr. Morita would seem to be one of the most talented and original of Japan's new generation of film makers."[6]
Notes
[edit]- ^ a b "The best Japanese films – one per year". BFI. May 14, 2020. Archived from the original on March 18, 2024. Retrieved September 25, 2024.
- ^ "「オールタイム・ベスト 映画遺産200」全ランキング公開". Archived from the original on December 15, 2009. Retrieved September 25, 2024.
- ^ "キネマ旬報が選ぶ1980年代日本映画ベストテン、第1位は「家族ゲーム」" [Kinema Junpo's 1980s Japan Best Ten Movies, No. 1 is "Family Game"]. Natalie (in Japanese). 19 December 2018. Archived from the original on September 12, 2024. Retrieved September 11, 2024.
- ^ a b Richie, Donald (2005). A Hundred Years of Japanese Film (Revised ed.). Kodansha International. pp. 231–232. ISBN 4-7700-2995-0.
- ^ a b Gerow, Aaron (December 20, 2007). "Playing With Postmodernism: Morita Yoshimitsu's The Family Game (1983)". In Phillips, Alastair; Stringer, Julian (eds.). Japanese Cinema, Texts and Contexts. Routledge. ISBN 9780415328487.
- ^ a b Canby, Vincent (September 14, 1984). "Film: "Family Game," from Japan". The New York Times. Archived from the original on September 18, 2024. Retrieved September 19, 2024.
Bibliography
[edit]- Gerow, Aaron (2008). "Playing with Postmodernism: Morita Yoshimitsu's Family Game". In Phillips, Alastair; Stringer, Julian (eds.). Japanese Cinema: Texts and Contexts. Routledge. pp. 240–252. ISBN 978-0-415-32848-7.
- McDonald, Keiko (1989). "Family, Education, and Postmodern Society: Yoshimitsu Morita's The Family Game". East-West Film Journal. 4 (1): 53–67.
External links
[edit]- Kazoku Gēmu at IMDb
- Arun Kumar. The Family Game (1983) Review – An Incredible Dark Comedy on the Middle-Class Nuclear Family Life. High On Films. May 8, 2021.