Customer Reviews

Twenty-Four Eyes (The Criterion Collection)

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This movie has been considered a classic in Japan since its release in 1954, and it's easy to see why. It begins as a charming, innocent portrait of a new teacher and her first grade class and slowly deepens into a touching yet realistic depiction of how each child's life goes on in its own way. Some of the children prosper, some fall into poverty and tragedy, but the matter-of-fact way that profound emotional issues are handled in this film without putting off the viewer is a feat that has never been accomplished so well before or since. A truly remarkable piece of art.

I didn't quite know what to expect from this film ... but as the last of its 156 minutes played, I wished it could have been even longer, although that would have meant a few more lumps in the throat & teary-eyed moments. It's a deeply moving film, and its sentimental scenes are truly earned & not the least bit gratuitous or pandering.

The story: a young woman begins her first teaching job on a small island village in Japan, with 12 students in her first grade class (hence the 24 eyes of the title). This opening sequence is charming & gentle, with the worst of the children's problems & woes easily mended with a few kind words & an understanding heart.

But as the children grow older, remaining in touch with their beloved teacher over the years, the harsher aspects of life begin to take their toll. First the Great Depression, then the rise of Japanese militarism -- and the teacher can only watch, sick at heart, as promising futures are dashed & redirected by family & social pressures.

While set in Japan during a specific period of history, the themes are timeless & universal, sad to say. When Japan continues its buildup to the Second World War, the patriotic songs & marches seem all too familiar -- as do the warnings from higher-ups in the school system that their job is to create obedient, patriotic citizens, willing to serve the state without question. It's made clear to our troubled teacher that any mention of other, antiwar possibilities are strictly forbidden, lest she be accused of being "a Red."

Yet she does what she can, telling her male students that she'd be just as proud of them for becoming farmers or clerks or rice merchants, rather than becoming soldiers. The boys, of course, are caught up in shining visions of military glory & honor, without the slightest notion of the dark & bloody reality behind them.

At the same time, she also struggles to help her female students become more than what family & society have prepared them to be ... not always successfully. Why does she struggle against such hopeless odds? Not so much for political or ideological reasons, but because of her individual compassion & spirit. These struggles even go on within her own family, as her husband is drafted & her own young sons dream of becoming soldiers themselves.

Covering nearly 20 years, the film has an elegiac tone, a sense of memories washing up over & over again upon the same shore which opens & closes the film. Hideko Takamine is superb as the teacher, nicknamed "Miss Pebble" by her students, changing over the years from the fresh-faced young woman who appears in Western clothes, riding a bicycle through the shocked village, to the middle-aged woman both wounded & tempered by loss & grief, still refusing to surrender to despair.

156 minutes may sound daunting, but don't let that stop you from watching this richly rewarding film. Most highly recommended!

This review is for the Criteiron Collection DVD edition of the film.

Twenty Four Eyes was released in Japan as Nijushi no hitomi. The film is one of the most critically acclaimed in Japan despite its obscurity outside of Japan.

It follows the lives of 12 students (the title is derived from the 12 students) at a school on a remote island in late 1920's Japan from their days as students to adulthood. I found it to be a great film and thought the storyline to be really good too. The film covers themes such as World War II, life and death.

The DVD has one special feature which is an interview with Tadao Sato, a Japanese film scholar who discusses the film and its director.

When the Japanese lost the war, this trauma had to be explained and given meaning. Ironically, shortly after Hiroshima, certain Japanese films critiqued the aggressive militarism that led to the disaster [See Kurosawa's "No Regrets for our Youth]. Then, the Japanese films changed. They stopped focusing on their own culpability in the disaster or their own war crimes, and concentrated on the loss, tragedy, and sorrow of losing so many Japanese sons. This film, "Twenty-Four Eyes," fits into that category...and for that reason has been so popular in Japan for fifty years.

As an example, when World War II looms, the boy students talk about becoming soldiers. Their teacher, Ms Oishe, responds that she prefers fishermen or rice sellers to soldiers. Later she is criticized gently for her "lack of patriotism" in her speech to the boys. To be fair, one aspect of anti-militarism ..the loss of freedom of speech...is well handled.

The story focuses on a self-sacrificing teacher and her relationship to 12 students over two decades. Everything is filmed around a small village bordering the ocean. Over these many years, the female teacher forges strong emotional bonds with all her students...and so when the boys go to war...and some don't return, her deep, personal loss is as extreme as that of a parent. The themes are reinforced though the changing moods of the sea or of the folk songs which the school chants. It's a very finely done film, although perhaps overly sentimental for my tastes. A great deal of attention is given to the serene, contemplative cinematography.

But...the director certainly never addresses the many injustices practiced by the Japanese on so many other Asian peoples. It reminded me, in a way, of the Buddhist movie "The Burmese Harp"...another excellent anti-war film that also sidesteps the issue of Japanese culpability. Nevertheless, few films are so poignantly intimate in treating the loss of life in war as this Japanese study. It does this because it slowly acquaints the viewer with the daily lives of the twelve boys and girls - all adorable - who grow up with their teacher in the small, poor village on the sea. In other words, the memory of the soldiers...as children...is a very important perspective because what this film does, which no other movie does quite as well, is to depict war as The Death of Innocence.

Recommended.

The director takes a long lens to a small place and produces a very big film. A class of primary school children on an island in the Inland Sea receives a new teacher in 1928. Over the next twenty years of economic depression, world war and costly peace, we see the relationships begun that day trailing in a dozen directions, like streamers in the wind, held together by a woman who struggles, learns and suffers along with them. This is not epic film-making, but it is powerful and often very beautiful. Even in black and white, the scene in which the young teacher leads her pupils weaving and singing through a grove of sakura in bloom (she is the locomotive to their carriages) is quite unforgettable.

The film's ambitions, however, are at the root of its weaknesses as a creative statement. Kinoshita takes the story to places beyond the scope of its ideas and sentimental style. In a sense, he looses control of the narrative, and this is felt most keenly during the last 20 minutes, as he wrestles with a resolution.

Kinoshita gives his main character a political awakening - invites questions from the audience - but fails to go anywhere with it. The events that wash up onto the teacher's small island and carry away the lives of her former pupils - injustice, depression and war - are like night-mists that come and go, withering the crop, yet never seen. The one, overt, hostile act of authority -police interrogating a teacher for having a "subversive" magazine - is talked about but not shown. The sole authority figure in the story, her headmaster, is a genial "uncle". How is it, then, that children are dying of preventable diseases and being sold into servitude at the age of 12 or 13; how is that innocent folk songs have been replaced with patriotic military chants; how come the graveyard is now filled with would-be fishermen and farmers-turned-soldiers? What political agency was responsible?

The film's medium is tears, not political discourse, but it is too good a film not to be concerned with the larger questions. Except, in the main character, we are left with little more, approaching an answer, than her off-repeated mantra, "nobody's fault" - the phrase, incidentally, that Charles Dickens used in "Little Dorrit" to satirise the complacency of his age. Kinoshita is anything but a satirist. Though we should not wish a film to be something it does not aspire to be, there are themes incipient in this work which deserved a braver treatment.

Takamine Hideko, a great actress, is quite wonderful as the sympathetic teacher.

This movies allows an inside view on japanese culture and behavior. Highly recommanded for interested people.

This is one of the best movies of all time. I don't know what the film academics have to say about it, but in my view it rivals anything Kurosawa ever did. But even that does not say it. It is as good if not better than anything in American cinema to date. I'm not kidding. It's that good.

I have seen this movie several years ago and I begged Criterion Collection to sell this. Much to my suprise it is getting sold!! This is the most remarkable anti-war movie ever made about 12 school children who are doing what school children do-go to school, grow up, and family life. After the children play a prank on the teacher, which causes her to injure her ankle-I would say about 45 minutes later-you will NOT stop crying. You see-it is what happens when ordinary every day life is turned upside down due to war. This movie was taylor made to make you cry. The school children-when they want to visit their beloved teacher-all run away from home and try to walk to her house, which is many miles away. Along they way they start crying because they are hungry. I know it doesn't sound touching-but it is. Everything in this film is touching, highly emotional-it isn't just a movie, but an EXPERIENCE you will never forget. Yes, I have the movie, but I'm ordering this gem simply because Criterion Collection re digitalized it. TRUST ME THIS MOVIE IS AN EMORMOUS EMOTIONAL EXPERIENCE-and it WILL make you cry I don't care how hard-as-nails you are!! IF I COULD GIVE IT A HUNDRED OR THOUSAND STARS, I WOULD!!! This movie is not just a good movie-it is a total and complete emotional experience, and is by far the most touching I have ever seen.

I enjoy a lot of Japanese cinema and this was on my list of films to get to and I am sad it took me so long to finally watch it. The story centers around the students and teacher at a small school in a remote Japanese coastal town. The viewer watches as the story progresses and the children grow and pursue their futures. The film begins with the years before WW2 and continues into the years afterwards.

This is a touching story, and one that is well told. The actors are very good, especially surprising since many are children. The settings are very beautiful and only add to the overall evocative feeling of the film. I highly recommend this film, it is surely among the best ever filmed in Japan.