The Funeral [Criterion Collection]

Director: Juzo Itami Juzo Itami

Overview

The directorial debut of Juzo Itami, this irreverent black comedy satirizes death and burial customs in a surprising manner for a Japanese film. Trendy film actress Chizuko (Nobuko Miyamoto) and her actor husband Wabisuke (Tsutomu Yamazaki) must rush from a movie set to mourn Chizuko's honored elderly father. The three-day wake is dramatized with rich comic detail and a funny supporting cast including Shuji Otaki, Kin Sugai, and Chishu Ryu as a greedy priest. Although Itami had yet to perfect the deft comic touch which made Tampopo (1986) such a treat, this darkly funny satire is still wonderfully entertaining and surprisingly touching.

Product Details

Release Date:	05/17/2022
UPC:	0715515271912
Original Release:	1984
Source:	Criterion Collection
Language:	English
Time:	2:04:00
Sales rank:	34,302

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Tsutomu Yamazaki	Wabisuke Inoue
Nobuko Miyamoto	Chizuko Amamiya
Kin Sugai	Kikue Amamiya
Chishu Ryu	The Priest
Shuji Otaki	Shokichi Amamiya
Ichiro Zaitsu	Satomi
Kiminobu Okumura	Shinkichi Amamiya
Haruna Takase	Yoshiko Saito
Nekohachi Edoya	Ebihara
Shuji Otake	Shokichi Amamiya

Technical Credits

Juzo Itami

Juzo Itami	Director,Screenwriter
Yutaka Okada	Producer
Yasushi Tamaoki	Producer
Yusuke Okada	Producer

Editorial Reviews

The Loved One did it first, but The Funeral did it better. Tony Richardson's 1965 adaptation of the Evelyn Waugh portrait of life and death in Los Angeles was a hit-and-miss film that tried to take in too many targets. Juzo Itami's debut film is more modest, though just as outrageous in some of its scenes (the mistress of the bereaved son-in-law demanding sexual satisfaction in the woods near the site of the wake, for instance). Itami, unlike Waugh and Richardson, is an insider; he's aware that when it comes to funerals, many contemporary Japanese are caught between their instincts (do it quick and cheap) and their sense of tradition and duty. Most telling are the scenes in which the grieving daughter and her husband resort to an instructional video for tips on, for example, how to register the right kind of moans at the service. As with a wedding, the expenses keep mounting, with each person who provides a service taking full advantage of the grieving family's distraction and ignorance. Though Tampopo has proved to be Itami's biggest hit in the States, this film offers a more substantial meal; it will certainly appeal to fans of HBO's superb drama series Six Feet Under.

All Movie Guide - Tom Wiener