Tissues at the ready as you’ll laugh and cry along with The Great Passage, which tells a smart story about intelligent people with gusto and heart.
This is the sort of film that The New York Asian Film Festival thrives on and once you get round to watching it, you’ll wish you could watch it for the first time all over again.
It seems strange, at first glance, that a film that revolves around the making of a dictionary can be so engaging for 134 minutes, but that’s just what director Yaya Ishii manages to do with this gem. It’s a simple premise, but one that seems to keep on giving and raising the bar as the film moves on. Our lead is the reclusive Majime (Ryuhei Matsuda) who is recruited to take the place of editor Kouhei (Kaoru Kobayashi) during the mid ’90s to continue work on the new modern Japanese dictionary, entitled The Great Passage. Majime, the serious one, is looked at as strange by his co-workers due to his softly, almost mutely, spoken nature. Outgoing, confident co-worker, Masashi (Joe Odagiri), in particular cannot figure Majime out. Over the years though, as their work slowly progresses, Majime learns the importance of communication and begins to come out of his shell to befriend his co-workers, as they bond over their shared love for the art of modern Japanese tongue and bringing the world their new and improved version of the dictionary.
The Great Passage showcases that warm, funny, sentimental style of cinema with all the trimmings that’ll leave you wanting much more. This witty film about words is a sly nod towards the importance of language and communicating with each other and how words bring us all together. It also highlights the lost art of grafting, working hard to achieve a dream, no matter how far away and how difficult it may seem.
The film boasts an equal rights of comedy and drama, never really favouring either one for too long and never going too big either. The fine balance it strikes compliments this beautiful story about a character study that also explores the notion of love, and how once again words and communication and patience is key to discovering love and allowing it to grow. As Majime falls for his landlady’s granddaughter, Kaguya (Aoi Miyazaki), he begins to realise that the shell that he insists on living inside needs to be torn off to allow himself to get what he really wants in life.
If there’s one film you absolutely cannot miss from this year’s festival or wherever it plays elsewhere, it’s this wonderful tale that’ll have you leaving the cinema feeling just a little happier about life.
Rating: A light-hearted viewing for this years festival which is sure to be a crowd pleaser, (8/10).
Recent Comments