The movie is a great example of japanese war dramas and definitly worth watching.
However, I think this movie could have been a bit better and I will use this movie to talk about 2 things it and many other movies do wrong in my opinion. For one, the movie uses extensive crying scenes to convey to the audience that the characters are sad and that we should feel bad about them. The funny thing is that the movie has great drama. I mean its war time, people are being cencored, people are dying and everything has this very depressing tone already. Seeing your characters burst out in tears during normal conversations is in my opinion cheesy and nothing else. It is basically the idea between showing the audience sadness directly and implying it and only making the audience feel sadness through the tone. The latter one being hard to achieve but when it hits, it hits hard. The first one feeling more easy and forced in my opinion and therefore can not convey the same emotion. Of course there are some great drama scenes with people screaming and crying heavily but everything has its place and time to make it believable and subtle.
This movie has this great moment, when after the war the teacher was on a boat with her son and told him one of her former students wanted to row the boat for her as well and then she mentioned that he died. It was a great moment because it implies that not only that one boy but many of her students died during the war and since the audience knows them cares about their deaths, even if we dont know every of her student by name, the lose of the war is implied... but then a few minutes after that they show her infront of the graves of EVERY single lost student of hers, crying while showing their name. One of those 2 drama scenes is done right and the other is forced and cheesy.
The second idea i want to talk about is when to end your movies. Its a compromise between delivering a finished package, framed with perfect edges, or having it a bit raw and unformed open for the imagination or even interpretation. You know making an ending that is open but not too open is very hard, but so is having it complete but not too drawn out. I myself like it more when things are unfinished and I have the longing for more, because I know if I had gotten more I would have wished it had been shorter. Often times films dont know when to stop and miss the perfect opportunity, which I find very frustrating. In "twenty-four eyes" you have this perfect scene at the end where the teacher is in her classroom again, seeing faces that look very similair to the children she tought 18 years ago (for one because they were to same actors, but storywise they were the children of her former students) This was right after the drama scenes that hammered in the loss this war created. Now we have this scene that conveys this message of hope and familiarity. The idea that there is a future and not everything is lost. Basically the perfect way to end. ....Execpt it went on for like 15 minutes with a reuniting scenes with all the former students and the teacher. It felt to me like the movie really wanted to hammer home the anti-war message more and show the audience how much the characters lost, even though we know that already. As if I was a child who has to be told that for like half an hour in order to understand it. You know this anti-war message is nice and all but dragging on your movie because of it and ruining the perfect ending for it really doesnt seem like a good idea.
It must seem like I hated the movie, but I really dont. I dont give 7 stars out to every movie I see, you can see that by my scoring system. But i get really frustated when a very, very good movie get torn down by such small things.
However, I think this movie could have been a bit better and I will use this movie to talk about 2 things it and many other movies do wrong in my opinion. For one, the movie uses extensive crying scenes to convey to the audience that the characters are sad and that we should feel bad about them. The funny thing is that the movie has great drama. I mean its war time, people are being cencored, people are dying and everything has this very depressing tone already. Seeing your characters burst out in tears during normal conversations is in my opinion cheesy and nothing else. It is basically the idea between showing the audience sadness directly and implying it and only making the audience feel sadness through the tone. The latter one being hard to achieve but when it hits, it hits hard. The first one feeling more easy and forced in my opinion and therefore can not convey the same emotion. Of course there are some great drama scenes with people screaming and crying heavily but everything has its place and time to make it believable and subtle.
This movie has this great moment, when after the war the teacher was on a boat with her son and told him one of her former students wanted to row the boat for her as well and then she mentioned that he died. It was a great moment because it implies that not only that one boy but many of her students died during the war and since the audience knows them cares about their deaths, even if we dont know every of her student by name, the lose of the war is implied... but then a few minutes after that they show her infront of the graves of EVERY single lost student of hers, crying while showing their name. One of those 2 drama scenes is done right and the other is forced and cheesy.
The second idea i want to talk about is when to end your movies. Its a compromise between delivering a finished package, framed with perfect edges, or having it a bit raw and unformed open for the imagination or even interpretation. You know making an ending that is open but not too open is very hard, but so is having it complete but not too drawn out. I myself like it more when things are unfinished and I have the longing for more, because I know if I had gotten more I would have wished it had been shorter. Often times films dont know when to stop and miss the perfect opportunity, which I find very frustrating. In "twenty-four eyes" you have this perfect scene at the end where the teacher is in her classroom again, seeing faces that look very similair to the children she tought 18 years ago (for one because they were to same actors, but storywise they were the children of her former students) This was right after the drama scenes that hammered in the loss this war created. Now we have this scene that conveys this message of hope and familiarity. The idea that there is a future and not everything is lost. Basically the perfect way to end. ....Execpt it went on for like 15 minutes with a reuniting scenes with all the former students and the teacher. It felt to me like the movie really wanted to hammer home the anti-war message more and show the audience how much the characters lost, even though we know that already. As if I was a child who has to be told that for like half an hour in order to understand it. You know this anti-war message is nice and all but dragging on your movie because of it and ruining the perfect ending for it really doesnt seem like a good idea.
It must seem like I hated the movie, but I really dont. I dont give 7 stars out to every movie I see, you can see that by my scoring system. But i get really frustated when a very, very good movie get torn down by such small things.