Liam's Story

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I am going to talk about a specific scene in a specific movie that is now over 30 years old. But that means a lot to me. The movie is called Tampopo. The director is juzo Itami. The scene I want to talk about is about a family. We are introduced to the first member of the story, as we see a man running past the end of one of the stories that we've just seen. And we see him run down the street, we see him run along the train track, he runs up his stairs, and he gets to what we assume to be the door of his house bulldozes in and we see in his house, there are three children, a man, we suppose is a doctor and a woman who we suppose is a nurse. Lastly, there is also a woman lying on a makeshift bed or roll on the ground, he runs in and by his tone, we can tell that the woman is sick, and that she perhaps has been for a long time he runs over to her and he says, stay with me, you can't die. And he says do something, sing do anything. And he hits the floor and he says don't make dinner. And the woman slowly rises and gets up and walks over to the kitchen. Kind of absent mindedly grabbing a knife and some spring onions. And she cuts them up, puts them in a pan puts other things and we see the family viewing this and we see the children because they know what to do have already gotten their bowls and have moved to the table we see the older sister setting things out for her youngest sibling, the mother or then comes back with this steaming bowl of food places on a table. And we see all of the hands come in and start serving themselves. However we see the mother first serve the youngest child. After that, they all start eating and the husband looks up and says it's really good. It's delicious. And we see her smile. She slowly falls over. And the doctor pronounces her dead. The oldest daughter screams and comforts her youngest sibling, the father yells essentially Eat it while it's hot. This is the last meal that your mother made for you.

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And we see the middle child, the boy kind of watching his father and doing the same thing. And then the scene cuts out. And it's over. And it's three minutes. I think a lot of the scenes kind of just pass by and spectacle. And so because of that the more intimate and caring scenes really stick out because you're kind of forced to sit with it and sit with what you've just watched. It's It's interesting how we consume media, and how we all come at it from our own different little lens. But for me, I think the scene that I described sticks out a lot because, you know, I think we're all able to see different parts of us in film. And it's interesting, because I think I relate pretty heavily to the characters in this scene specifically, my mom is still alive. You know, she's had different illnesses and different things that have kind of made this film stick out. This is one of the only scenes in a film that's ever I think really made me emotional.