Watch Memories of Matsuko For Free

Why so much hype?

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

If there is heart braking urban fairy tale, it may look like this movie. Story of a woman who comes across 'My life is over' points too many times that she finally realizes that nothing matters in the end. Matsuko is devastating and beautiful. The story of a beautiful girl who grew up dreaming for a beautiful like any child, faces the cruel reality, makes wrong decisions ends up in a trash. This movie reaffirms that what may happen in the end, the life is just as meaningful.Acting is top notch, music, cinematography and especially narration is brilliant. this is must see and you wouldn't regret.

The film is about memory as the English title states, this brings it under one of the most vital (and most cinematic) subgroups in cinema, films about our ability to recall life as illusion and mind rather than as just a bunch of surrounding facts. So what kind of recall here? A vagrant middle-aged woman is discovered dead one day, the kind of nameless death that might make neighbors pause for only a brief moment, and this is the first admission here; ordinary life next door can be the center of a rich world. This is done with a little too much obvious caprice for my taste but the essence is the same, we go back to find this woman when she was a sweet young girl with all of life and heartbreak still ahead of her.I don't know how much is personal for the filmmaker here but much is revealed by simply examining appearances. A vibrant memory, with a hyperactive consciousness that joyously swims through tragedy. It starts like one of those hyper Japanese TV ads, the filmmaker apparently has plenty of experience in those, but as we progress the whole is mellowed and given resonance behind the popup colors. This is the second admission, that life deserves to be celebrated with as much color. A preeminent formulator of Noh wrote in the 1400s, Zen inspired, that "life is a lying dream, he only wakes who casts the world aside". There's no such effort here to awaken to what creates suffering and to purify, the film is simply taken in by the swirl and sadness of suffering. I was reminded of the lush Powell/Pressburger melodramas from the 40s as well as recent Julie Taymor with her song and dance. Others thought of Tim Burton. To be sure though the fixation with color and artifice is as recent in Japan as anime but as old as kabuki.So, overwrought and sentimental melodrama on one side, too much so for my taste. Just the same I appreciate the bubbly air that refuses to dwell on misfortune; it's quickly brushed aside for some new heartbreak to come along. Yet it doesn't address its own question about the meaninglessness of life and it's in this deeper way that the absence of awakening resurfaces. The girl is merely buffeted along by attachment and need and at no point, down to her final moments, comes to a realization.In the list of hearbreaking films ultimately this deserves its own place next to Capra's Wonderful Life. This is, as much as anything else, because the filmmaker leaves his heroine to a horrible life and meaningless end because in the end she's only the figment of a story that he uses to inspire with but that inspiration and change is never allowed to her inside the story. The bittersweet worldview says, suffer as much as you are able to bear, in the end there is release.The penultimate scene is possibly one of the twenty best shots I have seen in my life, a flow of consciousness that lifts up from her and races through waters. Marvelous work. This is the cultivated awareness of the illusory life the Japanese have known for centuries across Shinto temples, Zen and the Noh stage.But the maker ends this a scene late for my taste. The last one revisits the home of childhood as the place from which to ascend, paying homage to the well known stairway scene from A Matter of Life and Death by Powell/Pressburger, which just says too much now as it did then.

What this movie is a dark and yet bright movie about a girl that goes through a lot of heartbreaks and difficulties during her journey during her time in japan. And the premise is sort of like watching a vivid adult fairytale. The movie is poignant and made you really have sympathy towards the character Matsuko, it was like no matter how much she struggled or tried her best it seemed like fate kept beating her down. I didn't find this movie all that original but the vibe and the direction it went made it it's own movie. Although the other characters were sort of unique I guess and a bit awkward, but that is just the way it is in some Japanese movies with way over exaggerated characters. The visuals in this movie is stylish and flashy and even sort of creative at times, but in a good way. And although the core of the story is told through flashbacks it's executed very well. What I really enjoyed about this movie is how it gives a good amount of depth to the heart and mind of a woman when facing loneliness. Again the story about a innocent girl losing her innocence bit by bit when reality hits has been done before, but this one is crafted really well. It's a dark adult fairy tale that is sad and yet beautiful and also touching at times.8/10

As a matter of fact, the only film I can remember crying over is the brilliant "Babette's Feast"."Matsuko" has a quality not unlike "Amelie", but mixed with a "Moulin Rouge" sensibility. It's part "Roger Rabbit" and part "Casablanca" -- never before have I seen stylistic pastiche used with such forethought and precision. Some will find "Matsuko" sentimental and predictable -- but I think that doesn't matter: It's the storytelling that's important in this film and not, necessarily, the story."Matsuko" may not be a "great" film but, like "Babette" and "Amelie," I will want to see it again. I have a feeling that many people will react to the film in a similar fashion.