Kon Ichikawa’s The Makioka Sisters is the Seven Samurai of domestic melodrama. The dense relationship between four Osaka sisters foregrounds themes of familial responsibility, personal identity, class tensions and the burbling conflicts at home and in the history beyond. All this is played against two backgrounds. The more obvious is the beautiful cycle of the seasons, centered on the spectacular.time of blossoming. Here nature and the women are at one. The second is the historic background. The periodic references to events beyond the family drama culminate in the specific date of the film’s closure.
In the last scene the oldest sister accompanies her husband’s move for a promotion to Tokyo. But her reluctance has exposed a sinister streak in him. The spinster third sister Yukiko seems finally settled into a relationship with a handsome young aristocrat who promises to keep an eye on the wayward young fourth sister, Taeko, who is happily committed to a penurious bartender.
But. The family relationships are not as secure as they may seem. The oldest sister may find teeming Tokyo a less amenable setting than her rule in small and familiar Osaka. The second sister may be relieved by her domineering sister’s departure but with a lingering and sensitive responsibility towards the rebel youngest.
The two younger sisters remain less secure. Yukiko is finally in love and properly engaged — but to a playboy of dubious stability. Also, she has innocently captivated the second sister’s husband, leaving him bereft, bleary and open to infidelity. And how long will the wild Taeko stay contented with her cramped domestica?
One more shadow falls across the happy ending. Some seven months later comes Pearl Harbour.
That is, just as the long saga of familial tensions appears to have been satisfactorily resolved, international hell breaks loose. Here is an epic drama about self-realization, aspiration, compromise, played out in one family in anticipation of its magnified replay around the globe.
This is a wonderful film.
