MOTHER ENDING EXPLAINED: JAPANESE NETFLIX FILM HAS A DEPRESSING CONCLUSION!
Tom Llewellyn
Tom Llewellyn
1 year ago
Netflix’s latest original Japanese movie ‘Mother’ had a rather depressing and creepy ending, but how can control and toxic parenting explain its conclusion?
There is no shortage of psychological dramas and horrors available to watch on Netflix, but not many movies or series are as emotionally disturbing as ‘Mother’.
The Japanese movie is a story of toxic parenting, emotional torture and one mother’s control over her young, unstable family.
Despite being a rather uncomfortable and creepy watch, the movie was incredibly entertaining from start to finish.
In this article, we explain the distressing ending to Netflix’s Japanese original and what that final scenes mean for the mother and her family.
MOTHER: Meet the cast of Netflix’s latest Japanese movie!
SHUHEI FINALLY SNAPS…
After Shuhei is ripped away from his last hope for proper education and brutally mocked by Akiko, he turns into a hollow-shell of a teenager and a weapon now primed for exploitation.
SPIRAL: SAW (2021 MOVIE) OFFICIAL TRAILER
Akiko knows that she has Shuhei completely under control and turns him towards the people that she believes is at fault for her life…her parents.
Shuhei arrives at their doorstep and is welcomed in by his grandparents. They are kind and despite everything that has happened, want to continue building a better relationship with their younger family member – even saying that Shuhei should meet their other granddaughter.
This is the point where Shuhei snaps, he is no longer cognitively present and is instead, a voiceless puppet for his mother. The next image we see of Shuhei is him walking back to his mother with his shirt covered in his grandparents’ blood.
===
"Mother" is a very hard film through its cruel realism, which could have been a great one with a few minor changes in the writing and the finale.
"Mother" is a very hard film through its cruel realism, which could have been a great one with a few minor changes in the writing and the finale.
Mother is a fascinating drama, gripping us until its brutal and ironic conclusion.
In the title role...Masami Nagasawa gives us one of the great screen monsters of recent memory...a Japanese "Mommy Dearest."
Mother is the work of a visionary director, highlighting a broken, abusive family life.
Whatever you may think of his title character, his film has the ring of emotional truth.
Mark SchillingJapan Times
=
Not all women are fit to become mothers
The plethora of indie family dramas in the Japanese industry have a number of motifs in common. The accusation of the current generation towards the previous ones, the overall lack of parenting, that not all women are fit to become mothers and bullying are the most central ones. Tatsushi Omori, in his latest work, which is now streaming on Netflix, seems to have managed to include every one of them, in a film whose pragmatism is quite shocking even more so since it is based on an actual incident that took place in 2014.
The film shows its colors from the initial scene, where we see Akiko, a single mother, trying to get money from her parents and her hard-working sister, first by yelling and becoming violent and then by begging. However, they will not have none of it, since their patience is obviously exhausted, and a frustrated Akiko leaves along with her little son, Shuhei, only to get to a pachinko parlor, essentially ignoring the boy. A bit later, she has already struck a mostly sexual relationship with a man she just met, club host Ryo. The man soon proves her equal in his despicable ways, with the two of them proceeding on bullying Shuhei and extorting money from a city hall employee, whom Akiko has exploited a number of times in the past. Things do not go their away however, although the couple seems not to be phased by anything. Ryo eventually begins to become violent just before he abandons the two, and soon Akiko finds herself completely broke and pregnant. Once more, she tries to exploit Shuhei by making him go ask for money from her parents, sister and his father, with the boy obliging blindingly to his mother’s conniving orders.
Some years later, a little girl has been added to the company, while the social services finally begin to deal with the “family”, who by this time, are just sleeping on the street. Shuhei finally sees some hope in the face of Aya, one of the social workers, but Ryo suddenly reappears after many years, and their situation soon takes a turn for the even worse.
Tatsushi Omori explores all the aforementioned motifs in the harshest way, by presenting a relationship, which is usually perceived as the highest point of love (the one a mother has for her child), that is exactly the opposite. Akiko is relentlessly and unrepentantly exploitative of Shuhei, never acting like his mother in any way, while the codependence that characterizes their relationship seems to border on something like a Stockholm Syndrome. On an even harshest and cruelest level, Omori shows how the bond of motherhood can turn into something truly sick, in essence destroying any chance a kid has to live a happy life, thus bringing us to the comment of how not every woman is fit to become a parent.
As we watch Akiko continuing her exploitative behaviour, the question behind the reasons Shuhei continues to stay with her, even after a proper opportunity to leave arises, begins to permeate the narrative, with Omori giving a shocking as much as realistic/pragmatic answer during the end, in the scene that should have concluded the movie. Unfortunately, once more in a Japanese movie, the film continues for a bit more, for no apparent reason.
Akiko’s character is the one the narrative essentially revolves around, with Omori and his co-writer, Takehiko Minato creating a character that seems to have no traits that will allow anyone to sympathize with her, apart maybe from the fact that she receives as much punishment as she gives on occasion. That she repeatedly throws away the chances she gets makes her even more despicable, with Shuhei’s fate cementing this aspect in the harshest fashion. Probably the sole fault in the writing of her character is the way her sex-crazed attitude is presented, particularly in the scene where she has intercourse with another man just after she is beaten by Ryo, which is quite unrealistic. This however, is just a minor fault in an overall impressive character, which also benefits the most by Masami Nagasawa‘s excellent performance, who presents a relentless addict with a very fitting, cruel realism.
On the other hand, Shuhei’s character somewhat lacks in that department, with the boy mostly reacting to his mother’s actions, although his age could somewhat justify the fact. Daiken Okudaira, who plays the teenage version, has his moments in the scenes with the social worker and particularly the final one, but again, he seems to somewhat suffer due to the writing. The same, more or less, applies to Kaho as Aya. Sadao Abe‘s Ryo, on the other hand, is both greatly written and implemented, particularly because, apart from being constantly despicable, also adds another level to Akiko’s persona.
Tomohiko Tsuji’s cinematography captures the story through an approach that fits the cruel realism of the narrative, also highlighting the claustrophobic setting Shuhei in particular inhabits. The editing follows the general rules of the Japanese indie, implementing a relatively slow pace, while the many flash forwards are well presented and do not alienate the viewer. As mentioned before, a bit of trimming particularly in the ending, would have benefited the movie.
“Mother” is a very hard film through its cruel realism, which could have been a great one with a few minor changes in the writing and the finale.
===
Netflixable? A Japanese boy’s best friend is his “Mother”Posted on November 4, 2020 by Roger Moore
In the title role of Tatsushi Ohmori‘s “Mother,” Masami Nagasawa gives us one of the great screen monsters of recent memory.
Her Akiko Misumi is a Japanese “Mommy Dearest” — cruel, callous, self-absorbed, violent and still enough of a hot mess to appeal to any man who crosses her field of vision.
When we meet her she’s manic, grabbing her little boy for a day of playing hooky from primary school. When we last see her she’s dead-eyed and pitiless, her life of selfish narcissism and emotional brutality doesn’t phase her as she lacks a conscience.
A social worker (Kaho) is the epitome of Japanese good manners and understatement when she describes Akiko as “incapable.” We’ve seen what she did to her son, Suhei, played as a child by Sho Gunji and as an older teen by Daiken Okudaira.
“Mother” invites the viewer to play a grueling waiting game, its suspense stemming from the viewer’s growing desire to see the boy stand up to the woman who has made him cadge cash off relatives, steal, take beatings from abusive boyfriends and lie in blackmail schemes.
And even though Tatsushi (“Every Day a Good Day”) never heard the English expression “too much of a good thing” in drawing this story out over years with a running time north of two hours, his villainess rarely loses our interest or our eagerness to see her pay for her crimes.
“Mother” is a story of co-dependency and loyalty, of lives lived on the street and promise squandered because of an impulsive, martyred mother who A) has a gambling problem, B) ruthlessly uses men, including her little boy, and C) has the idea that her children are hers “to raise as I see fit” (in Japanese, with English subtitles).
Shuhei can never shake her, never defy her. Not after she ditches him at seven to run off with a new thug, Ryo (Sadao Abe), on a drinking/gambling binge. Not after she and Ryo use Shuhei to blackmail the hapless civil servant she talked into “watching” the boy while she left him for her latest misadventure.
Shuhei is who she sends to beg for money off her sister and parents. Shuhei, as a teen, is the one with a job she talks into getting advances from his boss.
We need only one scene to establish Akiko’s addiction. Her eyes glaze over when playing a pachinko (slot) machine. We never see her win, never see her pay a bill. It’s all-consuming, and the boy she brought into the world is just here to facilitate her habit.
There’s wailing and shouting in her encounters with her distraught and had-enough family. And there’s violence as Ryo enters and leaves their lives, slapping around Mother and the little boy who can’t protect her as he does.
It’s not giving anything away to say that a second child enters this world of flophouses and sleeping on the street, when they hit bottom. Akiko’s lack of self-control extends to all things, even the unfiltered insults she rains upon her boy when ordering him to skip school and babysit, or anything else she can command.
Through it all, Masami lets us see the instant calculating, the in-the-moment impulsiveness, with narrowing of the eyes when she sends the boy in search of the next need she orders him to fulfill.
Tatsushi’s storytelling is deliberate and slow, showing us the agonizing days an abandoned child spends eating uncooked noodles because Mother didn’t pay the gas bill, playing video games until the moment the power’s cut off, because guess what?
It gets to be too much after a while, and Tatsushi’s ending is drawn-out, downbeat and deliberately unsatisfying. But every Japanese filmmaker knows that not every monster movie ends up with Godzilla blown up and sinking into the sea.
MPA Rating: TV-14, violence, much of it against children
Cast: Masami Nagasawa, Sho Gunji, Daiken Okudaira, Sadao
===
Mother (2020) review – Japanese Netflix film is a tragic story of cruel parentingNovember 3, 2020Daniel Hart0Film Reviews, K-Drama, Netflix4 Summary
Mother is the work of a visionary director, highlighting a broken, abusive family life.
This review of Netflix film Mother (2020, Japanese release) contains no spoilers. The drama was released on November 3, 2020.
Mother, not to be mistaken with similar titles, is a difficult movie to stomach. It follows a young mother who tries to manipulate the world into giving her money — she does not want to work, and she entertains herself with equally damaging men. For most of the film, your focus is on the child — a son that seems destined for a childhood of abuse and pain. There’s a level of cruelty displayed from this Netflix film, one that makes the audience question the motives of parents who do not want to do right by their children.
freestarMother does not sway past the cracks; the parent is unveiled as someone who is broken and serves no logical approach to parenting; everything is money, manipulation and scamming. The child plays as the audience’s perspective — nothing makes sense, everything is wild, and it’s a constant barrage of threat. The term “We are all God’s children” is hard to imagine when a film like this shows what some children have to go through due to cruel and abusive parenting.
The child is tentative and quiet. Netflix’s Mother frames it in a way where the young boy is trapped but also emotionally crippled by biology. We don’t choose our parents, and that love is somehow default. The director pours his heart into each scene to demonstrate how the young boy feels while his mother acts erratically and moves from one project to the next.
And it’s quite common from children in abusive homes to keep moving — it’s the only way that the parent can handle their life; it has to be chaotic and nonsensical to fulfil that need, that selfishness that overbears them. Mother displays that cruelty to a formidable level and maintains the story in its 2-hour outing.
freestarA film like this needs great performance and great they are. The cast manages to embrace the life of a low-income, cyclical hell, showing authenticity and naturalness in their performances. Everything feels “day to day”. There’s not an answer in sight, just general glumness.
Mother is the work of a visionary director, highlighting a broken, abusive family life.
No comments:
Post a Comment