Still Walking (2008) Review – A Quiet Day with Family
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| Sill Walking(2008) - Yokoyama family gathering |
π₯ Film Overview
| Detail | Information |
|---|---|
| Title | Still Walking (ζ©γγ¦γζ©γγ¦γ / Aruitemo Aruitemo) |
| Director | Hirokazu Kore-eda |
| Genre | Drama, Family |
| Release | June 28, 2008 (Japan) |
| Runtime | 114 minutes |
| Main Cast | Hiroshi Abe (Ryota), Kirin Kiki (Toshiko), Yui Natsukawa (Yukari), You (Chinami), Yoshio Harada (Kyohei) |
| Cinematography | Yutaka Yamazaki |
| Awards | Golden Astor for Best Film (Mar del Plata 2008), Asian Film Award for Best Film |
| Rotten Tomatoes | 100% (64 reviews) |
| Language | Japanese |
| Note | Created as a tribute to Kore-eda's late mother |
π Plot Summary
On a summer day, the Yokoyama family gathers at their parents' home to commemorate the fifteenth anniversary of their eldest son Junpei's death. He drowned twelve years ago while saving a stranger—a boy who was attempting suicide.
Ryota (Hiroshi Abe), the surviving son, arrives with his new wife Yukari (a widow) and her young son. His sister Chinami comes with her husband and children. Their mother Toshiko (Kirin Kiki) has spent the morning preparing an elaborate feast. Their father Kyohei (Yoshio Harada), a retired doctor, maintains his stoic distance behind a newspaper.
Over the course of this ordinary summer day—cooking, eating, small talk, cleaning up—the family's unspoken tensions surface. Ryota feels his parents' disappointment that he's the one who survived. Toshiko keeps Junpei's room untouched, a shrine to what was lost. Kyohei can barely look at Ryota. And every year, they invite the man Junpei saved to visit—a ritualized reminder of who is alive and who is not.
Nothing dramatic happens. No tearful confrontations. No cathartic resolutions. Just one day—unremarkable, uncomfortable, achingly familiar—in the life of a family that keeps walking forward, carrying their grief alongside their love.
πΈ Key Themes
The Weight of Being the Survivor
Ryota lives under the shadow of his dead brother. His parents don't say it directly, but he feels it constantly: You're not the one we wanted to keep. Junpei was the doctor who fulfilled their expectations. Ryota is an art restorer struggling to find work, remarried to a widow, raising someone else's child.
The film captures the quiet cruelty of survivor's guilt—not through dramatic speeches, but through a mother's lingering gaze at her eldest son's photograph, a father's perfunctory questions that barely mask disappointment.
Love That Can't Be Spoken
Kore-eda's families don't say "I love you." They express it through cooking, through showing up year after year, through tolerating each other's presence even when it's painful. Toshiko makes her son's favorite corn tempura. Kyohei awkwardly plays with his new grandson. These small gestures are the love language—imperfect, insufficient, but real.
Time Doesn't Heal, It Just Continues
The film's title—Aruitemo Aruitemo (even if we keep walking)—suggests that healing isn't the point. The family hasn't moved on. They probably never will. But they keep walking anyway: through meals, through awkward conversations, through another anniversary, another year.
The film asks: What if there is no closure? What if grief doesn't end, but we just learn to walk alongside it?
The Absent Center
Junpei is everywhere and nowhere. His photograph. His untouched room. The man he saved, sitting uncomfortably at their table, alive while Junpei is not. The film's genius is making the absent son the gravitational center—everyone orbits around what's missing.
π Personal Reflection
When I first watched this film, I wondered: Why this title—"Still Walking"?
I watched the creaking hallway floors. The light filtering into the kitchen. The mother and daughter preparing food, laughing over nothing important. The father emerging from his room when he smells corn tempura frying, unable to resist despite his gruff demeanor. Ryota, who doesn't want to be there but came anyway.
These utterly ordinary moments of utterly ordinary people—I struggled to understand what "Still Walking" meant.
But then I thought of my own family.
We all carry something. Plans that changed because of illness. Worry that sometimes manifests as frustration. Stress that makes it hard to sleep. The weight of caring for each other while trying to hold ourselves together.
We carry different burdens—some visible, some hidden. But we carry them nonetheless.
Yet we still laugh together. We still argue over small things. We still gather for meals, share stories, get on each other's nerves. We're still walking—aruitemo aruitemo—even when we're tired, even when the path ahead is unclear.
And suddenly, I understood.
Kore-eda's film doesn't show a family that heals. It shows a family that continues. The mother still cooks too much food. The father still hides behind his newspaper. Ryota still feels like an inadequate replacement. But they sit together anyway. They eat together. They endure the awkwardness because that's what family means—not the absence of difficulty, but the persistence through it.
My family is the same. We're not perfect. We're often tired, sometimes frustrated, occasionally at our breaking points. We snap when we shouldn't. We withdraw when we should reach out. We fail to say what we mean.
But we're still here. Still showing up. Still together.
We carry our disappointments, our regrets, our unspoken resentments. We carry the weight of what we wish we'd said or done differently. But we also carry each other—imperfectly, inadequately, but genuinely.
The film's mother keeps her eldest son's room unchanged, a shrine to what was lost. My family has its own shrines—not to the dead, but to who we used to be, who we thought we'd become, the dreams that didn't work out the way we planned.
But we keep the house anyway. We keep showing up for meals. We keep walking.
Maybe that's what Still Walking means: not that we're making progress toward some resolution, but that we're making the effort. Not that we've arrived at understanding or forgiveness, but that we haven't given up.
The film's final moments show the family parting ways, each returning to their separate lives. Nothing has been resolved. The grief remains. The disappointments linger. But something has shifted—not healed, but acknowledged.
They're still walking. They'll keep walking. Because stopping would mean surrendering to the weight. And family—difficult, frustrating, beloved family—gives us a reason to take the next step.
In that unglamorous, continuous act of moving forward, there is something quietly profound. Something almost sacred.
We keep walking because our families need us to. We keep walking because we need each other, even when we don't know how to say it. We keep walking because this is what love looks like when it's honest—not perfect reunion, but persistent presence.
And maybe that's enough.
π️ What Makes This Film Special
Kore-eda's Observational Mastery
Kore-eda's camera rarely moves. It observes from a respectful distance, letting scenes unfold in long takes with minimal editing. The viewer becomes another family member sitting in the corner, witnessing but not interfering.
This is a film where you notice: the way light falls on a kitchen counter. The sound of an old electric fan. The creak of floorboards. These details aren't decorative—they are the story. Kore-eda trusts that if he shows us the texture of life honestly enough, we'll understand its emotional truth.
A Tribute to His Mother
Kore-eda made this film immediately after his mother's death. He's said it was inspired by "all the things I couldn't do or didn't do while she was alive and the regrets that I have about that."
That personal grief saturates every frame. This isn't a film about family—it's a film from the heart of someone who understands family intimately, with all its love and failure.
Performances That Feel Like Life
Kirin Kiki's Toshiko is neither villain nor saint. She's a mother who loved her firstborn son and cannot—will not—let him go. Her love for Ryota exists, but it's complicated by disappointment. Kiki plays this with devastating subtlety: a lingering gaze, a tight smile, small gestures that reveal volumes.
Hiroshi Abe's Ryota carries guilt like a heavy coat he can't remove. He knows his parents wish he were the one who died. He knows and resents it. But he shows up anyway. Abe communicates this through posture, through silence, through the way he looks away when his father speaks.
Summer's Luminous Weight
Cinematographer Yutaka Yamazaki captures the specific quality of a summer day in Japan—bright but heavy, beautiful but oppressive. The clear light makes everything visible: the dust motes, the aging furniture, the lines on people's faces.
It's the kind of light that makes you remember childhood summers, family gatherings, the feeling of time moving slowly while everything important happens in the spaces between words.
π¬ A Line That Lingers
"People always live with a little bit of regret."
This single line captures both the film's core truth and Kore-eda's worldview. Regret doesn't disappear with time or understanding. We carry it. And learning to carry that regret while moving forward—that's what it means to be an adult.
Still Walking doesn't offer consolation. It offers companionship in our incompleteness.
πΆ The Meaning of Walking
The film's title might seem simple, but it contains profound complexity.
To keep walking despite grief. To keep walking even when the destination is unclear. To keep walking because staying still means surrendering to the past.
The family in this film hasn't healed. They probably never will completely. Toshiko will always mourn Junpei. Kyohei will always wish his doctor son had survived. Ryota will always feel like second-best.
But they walk anyway—through meals, through silence, through awkward conversations and small kindnesses. Through another anniversary, another year, another visit home.
Aruitemo aruitemo—even if we keep walking, we may never arrive at perfect understanding or forgiveness. But the walking itself, the continuation, the showing up—that's what love looks like in its most honest form.
π― Who Should Watch This Film
✅ Fans of Hirokazu Kore-eda's contemplative family dramas
✅ Viewers who appreciate slow cinema and emotional restraint
✅ Anyone reflecting on family relationships and unspoken regrets
✅ Those who loved Tokyo Story, Our Little Sister, or After Life
✅ People seeking films about ordinary life that feel extraordinary
π Where to Watch (2025)
Streaming & Availability:
Available on The Criterion Channel (subscription), Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV, and other digital platforms. The Criterion Collection Blu-ray edition includes director-approved transfer, interviews with Kore-eda, and an essay by film critic Dennis Lim. Also includes recipes for the food prepared in the film.
π Final Thoughts
Still Walking doesn't demand your tears. It earns them quietly, almost accidentally, by showing you something achingly familiar: family members who love each other but can't quite say it, who hurt each other without meaning to, who carry their dead alongside their living.
Kore-eda understands that most of life isn't dramatic. Most of life is breakfast, small talk, washing dishes, feeling slightly uncomfortable, laughing at nothing, letting time pass. And somehow, within that mundane rhythm, everything that matters happens.
The film ends as it begins—with people walking. Ryota and his family leave the house. His parents stand in the doorway, waving. Next year, they'll do this again. The grief will still be there. The disappointments will linger. But they'll show up anyway.
Because that's what families do. Not because they've resolved everything. Not because they've found perfect peace. But because this is what it means to be family—to keep walking, together and apart, carrying yesterday into tomorrow.
And in that continuous, unglamorous act of moving forward, there lies something quietly profound. πΆ
π¬ Join the Conversation
Have you watched Still Walking?
What did the film's quiet approach to grief and family mean to you? Did Ryota's journey resonate with your own family experiences?
Share your thoughts in the comments below—I'd love to hear how this gentle story touched you.
π¬ More from Cinematic Sanctuaries
If you found solace in this family's day together:
- Our Little Sister - Four sisters healing by the sea
- Toilet - A grandmother's quiet presence
- An (Sweet Bean) - Finding dignity through daily rituals
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