Blu-ray Review: Itami Jûzô’s Comic Satire The Funeral on the Criterion Collection

The Funeral is an at once wistful and whimsical depiction of the emotions unleashed by our private and public confrontations with death.

The FuneralFollowing the death of her father (Ôtaki Hideji), Chizuko (Miyamoto Nobuko) watches an instructional video that outlines the various rituals and proper etiquette for a traditional three-day Buddhist funeral and wake. Her husband, Wabisuke (Yamazaki Tsutomu), also looks on, similarly bewildered by the formality of the ceremony. In this moment, Itami Jûzô’s sharply perceptive, tragicomic debut feature, The Funeral, immediately announces its interest in the tension between traditional and modern values.

Throughout, Itami also pokes fun at the sometimes massive rift revealed between his characters’ inner turmoil—stemming from both grief and messy private dramas—and the stoic face they must put on in the presence of their guests. Like Itami and his real-life wife, Miyamoto, Wabisuke is a director and Chizuko is an actor, and as such the performative aspects of the upcoming funeral and wake come somewhat naturally to them. And Itami goes on to highlight how the purposely constructed and controlled reality that they craft in their home over the coming days is not unlike the alcohol commercial they shoot early in the film. There are parts to play and it’s Chizuko and Wabisuke’s duty to assume them out of respect for the dead.

All of these rituals come with many expenses, from the extravagant costs of the casket and headstone, to the hefty price of hiring a Buddhist priest (Ryu Chishu) to lead the chanting, to the buying of food and booze for guests who trek to the ceremony from all over Japan. It’s an enormous feat to pull off, and given the emotionally charged nature of the situation at hand and the potential for bickering, even feuding, among family members, it’s no surprise that Itami chose this setting as his first of many satirical targets in his filmmaking career.

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Itami weaves subtle touches of humor throughout the film, as in the scene that depicts Chizuko’s anger at Wabisuke for opening up another bottle of sake just as many of the lingering guests were about to leave. In another notable scene, the photographer at the ceremony repeatedly relays instructions to the mourning Kikue (Sugai Kin) on how to pose as she looks down at her deceased husband. But the filmmaker doesn’t shy away from broader comedic strokes as he captures the various ways that people’s basest instincts and desires inevitably reveal themselves at some point over three stressful, seemingly endless days.

The importance of money is skewered in a hysterical scene where, after the donations table is knocked over by a gust of wind, guests clamor over one another to grab all the loose cash flying in the air. Sex, too, plays a role in The Funeral when Wabisuke is forced to chase down his troublemaking mistress, Yoshiko (Takase Haruna), and make love with her in the forest to satiate her need for affection and prevent her from causing a ruckus.

But for as funny as much of The Funeral is, Itami consistently evinces a genuine empathy for his characters and compassion for the gravity of their loss. In one tender scene, Chizuko and Wabisuke’s son, Jiro (Ikeuchi Manpei), breaks down and cries, causing his mother to finally release her pent-up emotions. Later, members of the family have a moving conversation with the crematory operator, who not only explains the process of a creation as a means of comforting them, but describes the nightmares that plague him because of his job. Even at its most comedic, The Funeral is undergirded by solemnity, and it speaks to Itami’s talents that he can so skillfully walk the line between the satirical and the sincere.

Image/Sound

Criterion’s transfer is impressive, especially considering that it’s only from a high-def restoration. The image is consistently sharp, displaying a lot of detail in close-ups and in lower-lit scenes, and the color grading accurately renders the film’s naturalistic color palette. Some of the early exterior scenes have an autumnal hue to them, and those burnt oranges and light browns are beautiful on the Blu-ray, while the greens of the forest that’s featured throughout the film are vibrant. On the audio front, the mix is subtly complex, nicely weaving the frequent sounds of forest animals and the wind without overpowering the dialogue.

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Extras

In Creative Marriages: Juzo Itami & Nobuko Miyamoto, a short program produced for the Criterion Channel, critic Michael Sragow discusses the married duo’s various collaborations. In addition to The Funeral, he focuses primarily on Tampopo and A Taxing Woman, paying particular attention to how Itami’s depiction of female suffering was inspired by American cinema. There are also a pair of new interviews, one with Itami and Miyamoto’s son, Manpei Ikeuchi, who worked with his parents on multiple films, and one with Miyamoto, who talks about how her own father’s death served as the impetus for The Funeral and how making the film ultimately blurred the lines between fiction and reality for her. The package is rounded out by several commercials that Itami made for Ichiroku Tart and a bound booklet that includes excerpts from Itami’s diary during the shooting of The Funeral, a remembrance of Itami by actor Yamazaki Tsutomu, and a thoughtful essay by author Pico Iyer.

Overall

Itami Jûzô’s debut feature is an at once wistful and whimsical depiction of the emotions unleashed by our private and public confrontations with death.

Score: 
 Cast: Yamazaki Tsutomu, Miyamoto Nobuko, Sugai Kin, Ôtaki Hideji, Zaitsu Ichirô, Edoya Nekohachi, Ikeuchi Manpei  Director: Itami Jûzô  Screenwriter: Itami Jûzô  Distributor: The Criterion Collection  Running Time: 124 min  Rating: NR  Year: 1984  Release Date: May 17, 2022  Buy: Video

Derek Smith

Derek Smith's writing has appeared in Tiny Mix Tapes, Apollo Guide, and Cinematic Reflections.

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