Madadayo

Kurosawa's thirtieth film is, regrettably, as trite and embarrassing as its immediate predecessors, Dreams and Rhapsody in August. About Hyakken Uchida, a teacher who retires, in 1943, to concentrate on his writing career, and abandons his reclusive ways, once a year only, to welcome his adoring former students to his birthday celebrations, it's a maudlin, fulsomely nostalgic affair. The turgid narrative consists almost entirely of static, predictable, repetitive scenes in which the grown students, after reminiscing with the prof about the good old days, are overcome by tearful emotion and told by their mentor to shape up. 'Humanism' at its mushiest.