VOTE:
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Crispin-3 — 17 years ago(October 13, 2008 06:14 PM)
Love it, adore it, am totally infatuated. from the Brechtian opening to the touchingly beautiful closing credits this is a masterpiece IMHO.
Just watched it again last night (a Tampopo party, with noodles of course) it's been longer than I thought since I last saw it I thought I knew it by heart but it was almost like seeing it for the first time. I laughed until I cried and wasn't sure which I was doing a couple of times!
Like all great comedies, this movie works on several levels, and ultimately it's about life & journeys and their inseparable companions death and departures. The vignettes, although they have nothing directly to do with the main plot, are inseparable from this subtext. Food, sex, violence, love without these seemingly gratuitous scenes it would still be a good take-off of the 1950's "adult" Western (e.g.
Shane
), but it would not be the truly great movie that it is.
There are very few movies that I am willing to watch an unlimited number of times (BTW the Sound of Music is
not
one), but this film heads the list.
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yellowsnow154 — 19 years ago(May 27, 2006 05:52 AM)
i think that this is a great moviesnothing like a film which shows the appreciation of food and if anything why not japan, a country with expanse culture and noodle frenzies! Great was to make a film that held a great theme, style, characters and camera shots! Id say LOVE IT!
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phillip_thomas_sam — 19 years ago(October 13, 2006 02:19 AM)
Definitely loved it And i dont know what that other guy is going on about; the eroticism was an important part of the movie, it was one of its major points. If you dont believe me watch it again and do a thorough critique. You'll see what i mean
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luminalvelocity — 19 years ago(October 27, 2006 10:47 PM)
Loved it. The main theme of the innocent and earnest courtship between Tampopo and the Gregory Peck-ish lead-guy was really beautiful. I liked the Kurasawa- inspired surreal elements also, which gave the movie a fairy tale or dreamlike quality. Even though the erotic scenes made me think twice about giving a copy to my parents, I think they added to the movie by showing how central food is to our interactions with the people we care about, from our most intimate moments to our daily family getherings (the sick mother who summons her strength to cook for her family had me weeping like a baby).
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forgeit — 19 years ago(November 25, 2006 10:46 AM)
I lived in Japan between 1984 to 1987 in Saga kyushu, a place that at the time was so countrified it was amazing..I was there to study martial arts and the appraisal of Japanese Swords. Very few people had been in contact with a westerner and back then if you didnt learn to read kanji you didnt eat as the restaurants had no anglicised menus and there were no anglicised signs at the train station or on the roads. Tampopo is one of my favourite films as it shows Japanese culture and society how it really was back then. The erotic scene is absolutely essential, as we all know food and sex go together. To cut it out would lessen the film greatly. Another Itami Juzo film o-soshiki shows the Japanese attitude to death and is along the same lines. Just a shame Itami couldnt hold it together as he commited suicide.
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BigBabou — 19 years ago(November 29, 2006 06:25 AM)
I loved it. I thought it was very funny, and I was laughing all the time.
I'm not really good at describing movies, but as I see it, Tampopo is a satire on the Japanese obsession with food. It shows food in all its functions; cooking, eating, work, sex, violence, death, etc. I think it is all so funny because it is exagerated, but based on reality. (As I once told a friend, after visiting Japan for the first time: 'Japanese always seem busy either eating, or earning money to buy food').
The only problem might be that people that have not witnessed this obsession first hand (by visiting Japan), might not fully appreciate this movie. (Don't take it too serious!)
The scene of the mother dying after cooking for her family cracked me up, and so did the scene of the 'ramen-master' explaining the 'right' way to eat it (I've been doing it wrong all the time ;)).
By the way, did they already have the Balloon festival in Saga in the 80s?