Hello this is Jake Winters for eye on the triangle this is snowverated and today I will be taking a look at the film Still walking.

The best way that I have seen Still Walking described is a portrait. You are let into the lives of the characters in the movie for around 24 hours and generally just see how they live. Just as a concept it is interesting but I have to admit it sounds boring. Most peoples’ everyday lives have limited amounts of excitement in them so having a movie about a day or two in one specific family’s life is bound to be somewhat uneventful. Still walking is fictional but they still decided to make it somewhat uneventful. The whole time I was sort of wondering if anything major would happen and nothing ever really did. I still managed to thoroughly enjoy the movie though. It was calming and I felt relaxed as I watched it. This is in contrast to what today’s movie theatre experience is generally like. It is usually good to be on the edge of your seat for an entire movie but this movie never did that and at most only ever had me wondering but not anticipating where the day would go for the family as a whole.

The movie is set in Japan and is in Japanese. Because it really is a portrait of their lives it definitely depends on what your background is as to how you are going to receive the film. If you are from Japan and have left it may bring back memories from your old home or if you are like me and have no idea what life on an everyday basis is like in japan you may find the smallest things in the movie interesting. Because the movie is in Japanese the translation from the original script to English is almost as important as the original script. Japanese is one of the furthest languages from English so being able to get across implied meanings and subtext is quite the feat. Often times this aspect of foreign films is overlooked but in order for a movie to even function properly in another language it must be translated properly. In almost any language there a few ways to say just about anything. For example if you are saying hello to someone you might say Hey, how are you, good morning, whats up. These all have different contexts and hidden meanings to them. Some are formal and some are casual. In order to translate a film correctly you need to convey these contexts otherwise it just would not come across correctly. Now, I really have no way to know for sure if this movie was translated well or not just as I am sure many of the people who thought so highly of this film before me also had no way to tell but I feel like it is translated well because the music fits its moments and the expressions of the characters fit well. The portions of human interactions that have no need for translation like body language and emotion are far more important when a film is in a language other than your native one. It says something that the actors in this movie were able to have such genuine interactions that even though the movie may not have been translated perfectly you can still connect with the film.

Because I am not all that familiar with Japanese culture I found myself noticing little everyday items and tasks that were different from the things I am used to. This is a lot of what made the movie so interesting for me. I do not think that the Still Walking being specifically Japanese had much to do with the interest but rather just the foreign aspect and the movies attention to detail. If a movie of similar quality were made for any culture in the world I think it would end up being just as interesting.

Still walking almost felt to me as if it were a documentary at points. It didn’t have the one sided conversations that many documentaries have with the camera but the shots in the film had the same feeling to them. As with many documentaries I felt like an observer. The movie beautifully captures the everyday visuals that we take for granted. Even just seeing Raleigh on the way to work can be beautiful sometimes if you just take the time to stop and appreciate the buildings around you. I have to admit though that they chose a pretty beautiful town to film this in which definitely lended itself to the style of the film which was overall beautiful.

I am going to give still walking a 7/10. The movie was both beautiful and relaxing. I enjoyed seeing the minor struggles of family life we all deal with in such a positive light and generally felt like they did an amazing job showing one version of what it is like to live in Japan.

Thank you for listening to this weeks edition of eye on the triangle and snowverated. I hope you enjoy the rest of your evening