Always san-chôme no yûhi (2005)

Director:

Takashi Yamazaki

Writers:

Ryôhei Saigan (comic)
Takashi Yamazaki (screenplay) ...

Release Date:

5 November 2005 (Japan)

Genre:

Drama | Family

Plot:

Leaving her provincial home, teenage Mutsuko arrives in Tokyo by train to take a job in a major automotive...

Plot Keywords:

Based On Comic | Tokyo

Awards:

29 wins & 2 nominations

Cast

Maki Horikita	...	Mutsuko Hoshino
Hidetaka Yoshioka	...	Ryunosuke Chagawa
Shin'ichi Tsutsumi	...	Norifumi Suzuki
Koyuki	...	Hiromi Ishizaki
Hiroko Yakushimaru	...	Tomoe Suzuki
Kazuki Koshimizu	...	Ippei Suzuki
Kenta Suga	...	Junnosuke Furuyuki
Masaya Takahashi	...	Saburo
Kaga Mochimaru	...	Yûichirô
Toru Masuoka	...	The Theatre Manager
Takashi Matsuo	...	The Realtor
Hiroshi Kamido	...	The Postman
Hiroshi Kanbe	...	The Postman
Magy	...	The Butcher
Yôichi Nukumizu	...	The Bicycle Shopkeeper

Also Known As:

Always - Sunset on Third Street (International: English title)

Runtime:

Japan:133 min

Country:

Japan

Language:

Japanese

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital

Certification:

South Korea:All

Filming Locations:

Kurashiki, Okayama, Japan

Company:

DENTSU Music And Entertainment

Trivia:

The "Chagawa Ryunosuke" character is named after real-life author Akutagawa Ryunosuke. The Kanji characters of both names are nearly identical.

Goofs:

Miscellaneous: Just before opening title, Ippei spins the propeller of his toy plane clockwise. When he releases the plane, the propeller is spinning clockwise. The propeller was powered by an elastic band - releasing it would cause the propeller to spin counter-clockwise. The error was noticed in post production but couldn't be fixed without re-shooting the entire continuous one-shot or re-doing the CGI. They decided to leave it in hoping no one would notice (though they revealed the goof in the director's commentary).

Movie Connections:

Referenced in Alldays: Ni-chôme no asahi (2008)

Soulless insincerity

I went from cautiously liking this film in the first 40 minutes to despising it in the last hour or so. The schmaltzy sentimentality accumulates and creeps up on you, until towards the end you feel overdosed on insincerity to the point of nausea. The emotion portrayed is utterly hollow and manipulative in its dishonesty. By apparently trying to copy/compete with Hollywood at its most disingenuous, this film surpasses the worst of Hollywood hypocrisy.

There is plenty of style in the technical aspects of the film-making, but for all the "realistic" computer graphics recreating the city of Tokyo in 1958, no amount of vacuous slickness can give any honesty, reality or authenticity to the people and situations. The empty "rebirth symbolism" of the construction of the tower is an appropriate reflection of the empty film itself; is the film's soullessness symptomatic of the soullessness of the country's "rebirth" since the destruction of 60 years ago?