Home from the Sea (1972) (2024)

Popular reviews

• Review by Yavor Ivanov ★★★★½

  Boats blown by the wind...

  Another ruminative, emotionally arresting film from Yamada. It's the second entry in his nominal Tamiko trilogy, and this one cuts even deeper than the first (Where Spring Comes Late).
  Yamada, a seasoned bard specialized in catching the undertones of the constant changing states in life, again shows a profound understanding of how the shadows thrown even by the "smallest" everyday tremors and the "simplest" moral double binds are always way longer and deeper in the heart of the world.
  The film's images of the inner sea islands and their serene beauty and illusory stillness are often used as contrast to the calamitous storms raging in his protagonists' souls, but these images are always tinged with mourning as well as bittersweet joy. Mourning for an outgrown, no longer sustainable life, and joy in recognizing that mystery and wonder reside within change itself too.

• Review by Avirup

  A way of life slowly disappearing. Beautiful portrait of Inner Sea landscapes and its people. Pure, simple, touching with a great sense of nostalgia. Top tier shomin geki. Pretty terrific film and it's always lovely to see Chishū Ryū..

• Review by schneeland ★★★★★

  故郷 [ふるさと] : home town; birthplace; native place; one's old home.

  Classic shomingeki with social commentary by Yoji Yamada. Great in every respect.
  ~~~

  Thanks for the DVD, Rüdiger!

• Review by matteoB ★★★★ 1

  At its core is pure shomingeki and pure Yamada: family, furusato (the original title), etc., but it deserves one star more for the beautiful depiction of Inland Sea’s landscape and its life, and for a few but powerful and almost experimental scenes (the stones, the machinery, the eerie music).

• Review by matteoB ★★★½

  Less impactful than the first time I saw it (it was on the big screen), but somehow more interesting: now I could put it in the context of Yamada’s filmography, appreciate more the usual group of actors working in his movies, and put it in resonance with 家族 Where Springs Comes Late to which it’s almost a complementary movie.

• Review by Emma Fogarty✝️

  The stubborn, hardscrabbling working skipper sat by the dock
  scrambling to hold that which was to ultimately slip through his fingers

  Yet cradle still does he the rocks

  An angry roar announced his devotion
  filled with emotion

  Capital C capitalism
  so displaced the boat people
  who so doted on their lives

  Factorial fangs
  to eat into the earth

  old ghost ships
  stolen away by steel beaks

  A funeral for a crematorial ceremonial barge
  the prelude to an admission

  they were to be moved
  and thus cast aside

  to the tides they took
  as the child cried

  the old way died
  and the skipper and crew made their own waves

  as the distance grew far greater
  of what would later vanish...

  That where they were, had been
  fading from view...

  as the skipper set sail
  for something new...

• Review by Lencho of the Apes ★★★

  Evolving capitaism has made traditional on-island livelihoods obsolete, and a young couple has to sell out their family business and go work in a factory. It's not stridently political at all, everything's handled tatami-mat style in terms of how characters behave and what they're allowed to do/say. Kinda refreshing to see a post-1970 J-movie focusing on very average, universal-type people instead of emotionally-deformed ones embedded in an unhealthy culture.

• Review by Minh Nguyễn ★★★★★

  With the recent report from 60 Minutes stating that our way of life is basically doomed, I thought it would be fitting to rewatch one of my childhood favourites that deals with a similar theme on a smaller scale.

  Furusato is saudade x1000. It was the first film to hit me in the feels, and it remained in my heart for the rest of my life! This absolute feeling of longing, nostalgia - it would find me again and comfort me in moments of despair and moments when I wanted to reach out to something or somebody already gone.

  I get flashbacks to the ending of the film. With the sound of the engine, that final shot... And when the…

• Review by nasser ★★★★★

  home is the sailor
  home from the sea.

• Review by Gregg Humphrey ★★★½

  Yoji Yamada is a master of small, simple stories of ordinary people who's passion and inner strength transforms them into something special. This early film in his career is no exception.

• Review by confusionist ★★★★

  Class struggle, generational hardship and the effects of industrial sea change, Yamada is a true master of 70s cinema in need of reappraisal.

• Review by blahr ★★★★

  One must imagine the Sisypheans a happy family. "A skipper works harder and earns less than a laborer, but at the end of the day he's still a skipper."

  Everyone's been rightfully praising De Seta as of late, but FURUSATO effortlessly captures the same beauty along with an entire changing ecosystem: a house closing in at night as the parents stay out on stormy waters; decommissioned boats bursting into flames of their own volition; the hazy sea slowly receding from a train window.

  Yamada belongs to only a handful of directors with free reign over my tear ducts. Just have toothless ojiisan Chichū Ryū take his granddaughter to a scenic spot for the last time and tell her, "This is the island where you were born, memorize it good" – and you got me.