Fifteen - The Wandering Ronin

Fifteen - The Wandering Ronin

"The Wanderer goes,

moving lightly and quickly,

leaving much behind."


Upon pacifying my Monday Blues, I coaxed myself to watch a Japanese Movie on Central. Amazingly touching, yet unsentimental. Once again, the great works of Yoji Yamada; seems to have caught the world's imagination by storm. Over-throwing cynical sceptisms that divers the world over has donned upon, eversince primordial times.

It jolted me of a reverie. Which had been shrouding one's permanent comforting hiatus. Strangely, watching the movie was like screening a cameo of one's personal life -- mine, for a fact. Seems, to come to that same conclusion, all the time. Am I living a life in mono? Or just my girl-to-womanhood thoughts transition taking place. Either way, it irks me so fervently, feeling that an inevitable change is taking place, overwhelmed me, to a point of languishing the past.

Let me expatiate the Reader, since you have no idea to what I have been blabbering about; for the past 1 minute.hehe...

Synopsis:
"Daisuke, a ninth grade boy, refuses to go to school. He asks himself "Why must kids go to school ?" One day he sets out on a trip and sees a 7000 year old cedar tree standing on tiny Yakushima Island at the southern tip of Japan. 70-year-old veteran director, Yamada, underlines this innocently mythic quest by contrasting it with Daisuke's rigid and conformist environment at school and home. Meanwhile, every encounter Daisuke has on his pilgrimage is with a character somewhat out of step with the norms and expectations of society. And it is these marginal people who teach him most about life. At one point in the film, a woman truck driver gives Daisuke a lift and then invites him to spend a few days with her family. He bonds with her unusually silent and precocious son, who writes Daisuke a farewell poem that likens the two of them to ronin, the masterless samurai. Fifteen is comprised of such contemporary ronin figures, too odd and modest to be recognized as exceptional by others, but revealing them to be quiet heroes nevertheless. The directness and humanism of this unsentimental film recalls Renoir and his assertion that as one grows older, one tends to value the eternal and the classical. A lesson in simplicity."

How true. Or probably, just my melodramatic-side voicing. Without facing the real world, one could not manifest the harsh realities life has bestowed upon us. "The world doesn't owe us a living". Or so one thought. Metaphorically , I feel life; is just a passport to another better life. For better or for worse. One needs to deal one's choice. So I guess, I'd just probably, cleared the dubious thoughts of one pondering "What's the point in living?". That, I'm afraid would be a fraction to the Truth. One needs to seek solace through Religion to find answers and to hinder from aversions or deviations. If u do believe in Religion, that is.

Through the portrayal of Daisuke, in the movie. One impression that comes across strongly to me was the importance of; education and strong,loving family ties. Education is vital, so it will protect one from the Ignorance. And family bonds, which teaches one, the universality which binds one. Personally, I'd prefer the latter. Though I strongly agree on both. :)

"..alone this moment

memories like ocean waves

roll through the ronin.."