Fresh
A lifetime of moviemaking -- Kurosawa was 83 when he made it -- seems to have pared down his technique to its essentials.
Peter Rainer, New York Magazine/Vulture
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Madadayo
Overview
In postwar Tokyo, beloved writer-professor Hyakken Uchida retires and is buoyed through hardship by the fierce devotion of his former students, who honor him each year with a raucous “Not yet!” birthday toast. Told in warm, gently comic vignettes, Kurosawa’s farewell celebrates aging, friendship, and the sustaining ritual of teacher and pupils refusing to say goodbye.
Director and cast
- Akira Kurosawa Director
- Tatsuo Matsumura as Prof. Hyakken Uchida
- Kyōko Kagawa as Professor's Wife
- Hisashi Igawa as Takayama
- George Tokoro as Amaki
- Masayuki Yui as Kiriyama
- Akira Terao as Sawamura
- Takeshi Kusaka as Dr. Kobayashi
- Asei Kobayashi as Rev. Kameyama
- Hidetaka Yoshioka as Takayama's Son
- Yoshitaka Zushi as Neighbor
Critics on Rotten Tomatoes
Top critics, in their words
88%
Tomatometer
Fresh
It's not one of Kurosawa's great films; the compass of feeling is, in the end, too narrow, the scope of human reference too restricted. But it is, within its own proportions, nearly perfect.
A.O. Scott, New York Times
Fresh
This is the kind of film we would all like to make, if we were very old and very serene. There were times when I felt uncannily as if Kurosawa were filming his own graceful decline into the night.
Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times
Fresh
This warm, celebratory and very public film is punctuated by sudden and luminous private visualizations.
Bob Graham, San Francisco Chronicle
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