In a poor district of Edo lives a young samurai named Soza. He has been sent by his clan to avenge the death of his father. He isn't an accomplished swordsman however, and he prefers sharing the life of the residents, teaching the kids how to write etc. When he finally finds the man he is looking for, he will have to decide whether he follows the way of the samurai or chooses peace and reconciliation.
Junichi Okada Rie Miyazawa Arata Furuta Teruyuki Kagawa Tomoko Tabata Ryûhei Ueshima Yuichi Kimura Ryo Kase Seiji Chihara Sei Hiraizumi Moeko Ezawa Yui Natsukawa Jun Kunimura Katsuo Nakamura Renji Ishibashi Susumu Terajima Ken'ichi Endô Shohei Tanaka Yuji Nakamura Ryo Katsuji Natsuo Ishido Masa Tommies Eiji Minakata Tadanobu Asano Yoshio Harada Ohga Tanaka Hiei Kimura Midori Hiro Natsumi Iuchi Show All…
Hana yori mo naho, More Than Flower, はなよりもなお, Hana The Tale Of A Reluctant Samurai, Hana - Mese egy kelletlen szamurájról, Хана, 하나, 花之武者, 花の武者
Hong Kong
Hong Kong Asian Film Festival
Japan
Hong Kong
South Korea12
USA
Taiwan
Hong Kong
Japan
South Korea
Taiwan
USA
You know, maybe running away from a pointless fight doesn’t make you a coward. Maybe most fights are pointless. Maybe masculinity doesn’t have to be defined by toughness or rigidity or an eagerness to commit violence. Maybe we shouldn’t so easily idolize tough guys and violent men.
In Hana, Hirokazu Kore-eda reveals the desire for vengeance for what it really is. Utterly useless. Totally destructive. Kinda ridiculous. And worst of all, contagious… spreading directly from perpetrator to the loved ones of the person so deserving of punishment, and on and on. The continual cycles of violence, and all that… maybe violence and hatred and anger only beget greater violence and hatred and anger… I know, crazy, right?
This is, without…
Japanuary 2022: Hirokazu Kore-eda
Hirokazu Kore-eda’s take on the samurai genre is light-hearted and gentle, with a humanist touch. We follow a samurai living in a poor community, and his fellow clan members are encouraging him to seek revenge against his father’s murderer. However, he prefers a more laid-back, less drama-filled lifestyle – a life where he does not have to put his (lack of) sword skills to the test.
The same story in the hands of another director – a samurai struggling with the moral dilemma of deciding whether to kill or not to kill – could have been bloodier, seedier, and darker. Instead, Kore-eda injected the story with humor and low-key elegance. I expected the understated beauty, as…
This film was near impossible for me to find and judging by the fact there’s just under 300 reviews for it, I’d assume it was the same for everyone. I guess this isn’t a movie that you’d watch unless you’re trying to 100 percent a director or actors filmography though. Hana is basically Hirokazu’s attempt to be Kurosawa. Well not exactly but it’s funny that he decided to do a movie involving samurai since everything else I’ve seen has just been more family/relationship oriented.
The ambient sounds in this have a strong presence as always when it comes to Hirokazu films but besides that and the fact that it has a bit of a slice of life feel, this is…
Kore-edas fifth feature is hardly offensive in its misgivings; just sorely missing his magic touch. Hana yori mo Naho presents an outlier in the Koreeda oeuvre, in that you have to be looking fairly closely to recognise any of his usual touchstones. Gone is his potent blend of dazzling visuals and the core emotional resonance it so stunningly embodies. Look hard enough and you’ll peg his trademark familial strain resulting in grief and fascination with death of the existential variety, but it’s just not enough to make up for that missing spark. That rhythm that makes his work sing so loud, and so pretty. Almost as if he reeled in all his best instincts to see if he could get…
#20 - Hirokazu Koreeda from Japanuary Challenge 2025
Progress: 39/35
"All this noise every damned morning." (lmao) 😤😅😂
"He's useless..." 🙄😳😜
"The father chases female ass, the son chases male ass..." 😇🫢😂
"Hurry up and jump her, man." 😱🫣🤭
"I mean.. with his pen..." 🤪😂🤣
"Talk about your sh*t, at this hour!" 😅💩🤣
"Eat sh*t!" 🤐😂🤣
"Hana yori mo naho" aka (just) "Hana" (lol) was interesting, challenging and, certainly, (very) funny.
I found this such an interesting (even bold?!) "project" from Koreeda. In a way, a deconstruction of the samurai, involving revenge, a moral dilemma, a village of "useless" peasants, some considerable cultural "innuendo" and, why not, even the (famed) 47 Ronin... more so, he definitely meshes a very strong…
"Revenge isn't the only way to demonstrate your devotion".
😌☝️♥️
During the Edo period a group of samurai without a master settled in a small poor village inhabited by colourful people. One of them is Sōzaemon, a not very skillful young man who seeks to avenge the death of his father and erase the image of incompetent man within his clan. However, Sōza takes time to carry out his mission; his life passes effortlessly as he teaches the village children how to write and basic math, makes new friends and falls in love with the beautiful Osae.
Kore'eda makes an incursion into jidaigeki with Hana yori moho, a story with a different image of samurai who are not presented as those imposing heroes of mythical legends. Although he does so…
tall tales make flowers bloom but bear no fruit
at its core, hana is less a film about a samurai seeking vengance, and more a film about the complicated relationships between fathers and sons. is it possible for a son to honor a father without hate as the primary motivation? must soza succumb to the hate left by his father's death and kill his father’s murderer? a lighthearted, yet touching film, hirokazu koreeda shows us what the true meaning of honor is, and - perhaps - even the filth in our lives is capable of producing beautiful flowers.
(7/24/22)
As vezes não precisamos do ar da vingança pra concluirmos nosso propósito de vida.
Filme escrito e dirigido pelo Hirokazu Kore-eda, conta a historia de um samurai que quer vingar o assassinato de seu pai, que faleceu em uma briga de bar. Ele fica sabendo que o assassino mora em uma região de miséria e daí vive entre o povo na pobreza pra alcançar eu objetivo.
Mas o que vemos aqui é um samurai que não liga muito de ser samurai, ele passa a se importar pouco a pouco com os moradores da região, de forma que ele fica em um conflito consigo mesmo sobre isso, ele está determinado, mas aos pouco a narrativa explora a vida cotidiana dos moradores,…
Didn't know Kore-eda had this in him. I'm really pleasantly surprised by his versatility, and really tired of people saying he makes the same movie over and over again LOL. This basically just feels like a hangout samurai flick. It's a lot of fun, it's lighthearted, and it really made me smile.
I do think that the film went a little too long though. I really appreciated Kore-eda's different approach to a samurai film, but I don't think the plot was quite beefy enough to warrant a 2+ hour runtime. That being said, I thought Soza was a really charming main characters and I enjoyed the world building of the small town of Edo.
For such an interesting premise, for some reason, nothing seems to work. This is the kind of boring that's not boring for being too long or too slow; instead, it's uninteresting from start to finish. For a comedy drama, it's neither funny nor dramatic, and I'm not sure how to quite explain it. For comedy dramas, some may be 90% comedy and 10% drama, whereas others 90% drama and 10% comedy. I can't say which this falls into as it feels like neither. There is some sliver of drama, but it never feels serious or worth caring for. Many jokes come and go but none are funny enough to laugh. It feels almost like normal banter that people say and…
