Muddy River (1981) User Reviews

Great film and about its DVD release

[fa7999 · 9/10 · 9 January 2016]

To answer the questions from the two reviewers above, Japan released a DVD box set of all major works by Oguri, including Muddy River and His masterpiece Sting of death. I saw Muddy River in the early 80s and connected with this film deeply. Exceptional film and one of a handful of best movies about children. To the great list about child movie a reviewer mentioned above, I will add Ponette and Shoeshine t the list. Or even maybe Ivan's childhood. Ponette has probably the best child performance ever captured on the silver screen.

Oguri only made a handful of films in his career but undoubtedly he has left a strong impression on many cinephiles. I highly recommend that you guys check out his other films.

Sad but good.

[davecolly · 7/10 · 13 July 2020]

This film actually made me cry. It was the sad reality after World war 2, told in story format. The ending is pretty sad but it's an interesting watch for a black and white film. It won quite a few awards in the 80s and was even nominated for the oscars back in 1982.

10 years after the war in Osaka

[shi612 · 10/10 · 10 July 2005]

While there are many movies a child is the lead, this one is outstanding. You can empathize the children recalling your own childhood. The children here are not necessarily cute. But from this movie, you can see real sensitivity of children who feel social contradiction in their bones.

It is set to Osaka 10 years after the end of the WW2. Japan had been tremendously broken down in the war, but had miraculous recovery after it, thanks to the Korean War. Osaka is a metropolitan which has resumed prosperity and growth.

The noodle restaurant owner in this movie looks poor, but at least they can manage daily life. They and their customers had survived the war, and had worked very hard to resume the life. This couple's attitude to other people around is always warm. They accept the children from the "kuruwa-bune" (prostitution boat) without prejudice. They pay a visit to the husband's former wife at the deathbed and show their son. Everybody had such inherent, pure heart, and those who are left from the rapid economic growth kept it.

WHY isn't this available on DVD or VHS?

[brucetwo · 25 October 2006]

This film never seems to have been released, on VHS or DVD--WHY? It won several awards when it came out, and it's director is well-known. Was it ever released in Asia on any home video format? This is TOIO GOOD A FILM to be so forgotten!! This film reminds me of--yes--many other films about childhood--"Whistle Down the Wind" is another film few people remember. This film was released in 1981, yet it's setting in post-WWII Japan makes it seem timeless--especially the use of black and white throughout, and the strong ending. But there are many subtler asides--the one father's seeming allusion (as a Japanese war vet)to war crimes they were forced to commit in China ("we did all the dirty work") and all this still overlain with the aura of nostalgia and childhood "mystification" make it a very powerful and subtle film. I wonder if the social criticism and allusion to war crimes are what has kept it out of home-viewings release and in total obscurity for the past 25 years?!?!

Academy Award winner or nominee?--Great film--was it censored?!

[brucetwo-2 · 10/10 · 15 January 2014]

I saw this on a college film series, when it first came out. It blew me away! Really captured the "world of childhood"--including my own. Nothing as dramatic as this film really happened to me, an American kid in the Midwestern US, living on a large river, but all the atmosphere and feelings are there. Everything in the film--including relatives who ran a restaurant, and hanging out with friends etc, reminded me of specific things from my own life, during that post world-war-two era.

I thought I read that it was nominated or awarded for Best Foreign Film at the Academy Awards in the early 1980s. Am I wrong about that? For many years I've wondered why this has never become available on DVD or VHS or streaming. There is some allusion in the film about Japanese war crimes and atrocities in China during the war--the father of one of the kids says "we did all the dirty work for the government and where are we now?" or something similar.

I can't help wondering if this rather indirect acknowledgment of these atrocities, even in the 1980s and later--have kept the Japanese from releasing it to a mass world-wide audience. Put it on DVD and Blu-Ray or even YouTube guys--it's a classic!!!

Only Akira's SEVEN SAMURAI comes close to this!

[johnny_desade · 10/10 · 6 July 2022]

I started watching this movie around noon yesterday... and have been watching it over and over and over, hoping that the ending would miraculously change, if I just watched it one more time...

Only Akira's SEVEN SAMURAI comes close to this!

(Guys: if you are in the doghouse for whatever reason, watch this with your Signficant Other... you wil be forgiven by her for whatever you did!)

Muted contemplation of the sadness of life

[evening1 · 6/10 · 25 October 2023]

No sooner has a cheery horse-cartman saved enough to buy a truck, than he's suddenly killed in an accident on the street.

As young Nobuo's mother muses, "We never know how or when we will die."

The observant 10-year-old takes in such truths as he befriends a poor kid from a houseboat along the turbid Tosabori in postwar Osaka. Kiichi is entirely unschooled, poised to steal someone else's property along the side of a road, or entertained by setting live crabs afire, while Nobuo models the morals of a stable family.

Nobuo encounters some rude shocks along the way. In one interlude, his father's former lover grasps his hand as she dies. In another, Nobuo discerns how Kiichi's beautiful mom scrapes by.

Nobuo loses his friend as suddenly as he appears, and we share in his sense of isolation.

Deeply moving

[fertilecelluloid · 2 January 2004]

This flawless movie, directed by Japan's Kohei Oguri, is one of the half dozen best films ever made about childhood -- the others are FORBIDDEN GAMES (Fr), 400 BLOWS (Fr), THE NIGHT OF GTHE HUNTER, SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE (Fr), PIXOTE (Brazil), RUNNER (Ir), THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL (Czech) and THE CROW (Czech).

An intensely moving and naturalistic study of a poor family living on a permanent river barge, its central focus is the friendship of two children.

The atmosphere Oguri conjures is nothing less than amazing and all performances are peerless.

See this before you die.