Madadayo (1993)

Japan 134m, Colour
Director: Akira Kurosawa; Cast: Tatsuo Matsumura, Kyōko Kagawa, Hisashi Igawa, George Tokoro

Madadayo is a joyous last film in the career of Akira Kurosawa. It recounts the celebration of the life of Hyakken Uchida – a popular writer and educator whose autobiographical writings formed the basis for this film. It is also a fitting farewell for Kurosawa the film maker, and serves as a beautiful bookend to his own illustrious career which had a similar impact on students and admirers of his thirty films. In Madadayo, Kurosawa returned to the familiar setting of post-war Japan which was the basis for much of his earliest productions. In doing so, he also combined many of the best aspects of these earlier works, including a thoughtful and meticulous screenplay and beautiful photography with his more recently developed application of colour and surreal imagery to produce one of the kindest and most introspective films of his career (Klaus Ming January 2011).