The Family Game
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| 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 is the first major film by the director and is an example of postmodern cinema.[1] 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. 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] The film was also selected as the best Japanese film of 1983 by the BFI.[1]
Although the movie missed the Japan Academy Prize for the Best Picture (losing out to Palme d'Or Winner The Ballad of Narayama), Ichirōta Miyagawa was awarded Newcomer of the Year.
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). Shigeyuki is a junior high school student. He will soon be taking a high school entrance examination. Unlike his high school student brother, Shinichi, who lives up to the father's expectations, Shigeyuki’s grades are poor, and he is only interested in roller coasters. He is also bullied at school by a classmate and his lackies. His father finds a private tutor, Yoshimoto (Yūsaku Matsuda), for Shigeyuki and imposes all responsibilities for his exam on the tutor. Yoshimoto's behavior is extremely strange, including kissing Shigeyuki and hitting him painfully hard. Even though Yoshimoto is a seventh-year student from a third-rate university, Shigeyuki’s marks become better and better. 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, hitting people, pouring wine indiscriminately, and throwing spaghetti around wildly.
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.
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.[4]
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.[3]
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."[5]
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."[5]
Notes
[edit]- ^ a b "The best Japanese films – one per year". BFI. 2020-05-14. Retrieved 2024-09-12.
- ^ "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"] (in Japanese). 19 December 2018. Retrieved 11 September 2024.
- ^ a b Richie, Donald (2001). A Hundred Years of Japanese Film. Kodansha International. p. 231-232. ISBN 9784770029959.
- ^ quoted in Aaron Gerow, "Playing with Postmodernism: Morita Yoshimitsu’s Family Game," in Alastair Phillips and Julian Stringer, ed.Japanese Cinema: Texts and Contexts (London; New York: Routledge, 2007). p. 242.
- ^ a b Canby, Vincent (September 14, 1984). "Film: "Family Game," from Japan". The New York Times. Retrieved September 19, 2024.
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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.