1980 ‘遙かなる山の呼び声’ Directed by Yoji Yamada
The quiet life of a mother and her young son living on a farm in Hokkaido is changed by the arrival of a man who ignites flames of romance in the heart of the mother and shows her boy the importance of grit and kindness, but then he leaves with the autumn wind.
Ken Takakura Hidetaka Yoshioka Chieko Baisho Tetsuya Takeda Noko Konoha Mizuho Suzuki Tokuko Sugiyama Tappei Shimokawa Taijirou Ono Yasuhisa Sonoda Takuji Aoki Gō Awazu Kyōichi Satō Megumi Otake Kazuhiko Kasai Seiji Shinohara Keiji Tsuchida Nobuo Takagi Masao Irie Hajime Hana Kiyoshi Atsumi Masanori Hata
Haruka naru yama no yobigoe, 远山的呼唤, Llanto de Primavera, Ett rop ur fjärran, 遠山的呼喚, Зов далеких гор, 아득한 산너머에서 부르는 소리
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Spring comes late to the north...
Storms on a sapphire horizon
A lost voyager hurrying before their darkness
In his tiny hands - the summer
The cinematography is so beautiful. I have no words for it, but I can back this up with the many gorgeous screenshots that I took (in no order). Don't worry, no spoilers or anything.
The story is just as beautiful as the film looks. A man (Ken Takakura) stays the night with a widowed farmer (Chieko Baisho) and her son during a stormy night. He leaves the next day but returns to work on the farm in exchange for a place to stay and some hearty meals. What follows is everything you'd want for a drama about working on a farm throughout the seasons. I'm sure you'll get just as teary-eyed as I did and maybe go through a few tissues or, you know, the whole box.
Other thoughts:
・beautiful Hokkaido
・Sound of Music
・horse named Disco Queen
・that ending ripped me to shreds
This is the last movie of an informal trilogy, the so called Tamiko trilogy (Where Spring Comes Late and Home from the Sea are the first two), directed between 1970 and 1980 by Yamada and with Baisho Chieko in the main female role (in all three films her name is Tamiko, but it’s not the same character).
The color palette used is one of the best qualities of the movie, the greens have never been greener on the big screen, and the grays, in the last part, never more gray. A declaration of love from Yamada and his staff for the land depicted. Yamada filmed Hokkaido in many of his best films, and here Hokkaido’s countryside with its farming life,…
A little lighter on stuff happening than THE YELLOW HANDKERCHIEF, but then it’s also got less sexual assault in it and Chieko Baisho actually has a substantial role, so I call that a win.
I love this movie. Baisho and Takakura are two of the best to ever do it and those Hokkaido skies are unreal.
Yamada pulls off a hat trick at the end when the film references both THE YELLOW HANDKERCHIEF and ABASHIRI PRISON.
Didn't hit me as hard as The Yellow Handkerchief, it definitely has more of a stop and smell the roses thing going on, but god damn those roses!!! Yoji Yamada shoots Hokkaido like a love letter. Tora-san shows up for 5 minutes to artificially inseminate a cow.
The Man with No Name
Colloquially referred to as the “Clint Eastwood of Japan,” Ken Takakura is not a very well-known actor in the West. Best and probably only known for his roles in, THE YAKUZA, MR. BASEBALL and BLACK RAIN, Takakura’s comparison to the famous American auteur are fairly surface level. Clint never starred as a gangster (less a yakuza) in anything, and his only romance film is one about an affair. Ken-san only carried a six-shooter and rode a horse in one movie, and never really took to any Dirty Harry-like roles. So why the title? The only thing I can put my finger on is the stoicism Ken-san perfected throughout his career, but even still that’s too…
“I don’t feel we’re strangers anymore.” Gorgeously subdued melodrama; such quiet hearts still beating so passionately beneath these vast, painterly Hokkaido skies. “Like The Sound of Music! My Darling Clementine!” A tough single mother running a farm alone and a strange man with a mysterious past emerging out of a stormy night’s darkness; a set-up so straightforward turned so sublimely alive and deeply felt, a bittersweet vision of two people just finding a way to maybe hurt a little less. “I’m very small, so if the wind blows, it almost blows me away too. And this happens to me over and over again.” Kosaku’s past catches up with him with the inevitability of winter’s certain arrival after even the most…
Chieko Basho and Ken Takakura star in a two hour drama directed by Yoji Yamada, focusing on a farmer's widow who takes in a stranger.
I've never seen the Alan ladd starring film Shane that a reviewer on letterboxd mentions alongside this, but I might have to if its nearly as good as Yamada's film is.
Something was just going on in 80s Japan with the cinematography commenting on the characters situation through landscape, this time its not the city, its nice shots of rural Japan you soak up and in, so the film doesn't end up getting boring, even though its quite long and slow placed, its dignified in its melodrama and the pace takes you along for the…
she gave him the handkerchief at the end! 😭😭😭 (those who’ve seen the film - yellow handkerchief, will know)
With the same group of actors, I’m pretty sure this ending film of the tamiko trilogy was meant as the prequel for the yellow handkerchief 1977. yoji yamada is a gift for every shomin geki genre fan of 80s japanese eiga!
The very slow pace challenged me (as sometimes happens when I’m not in the ideal mood for a slower film), but it’s subtle in a way that largely works, has beautiful visuals, and Chieko Baisho is as good as always.
I can see why her and Yoji Yamada collaborated dozens of times over so many decades, because her acting and his direction always seems to work so well together.
It’s also always fun to see Kiyoshi Atsumi show up in a more serious Yamada film and bring a small amount of levity to a scene or two.
