Jiro Dreams of Sushi ( David Gelb 2011) USA

Reviewed by Lulu Yamaguchi. Viewed at Santa Barbara Film Festival.

Jiro Dreams of Sushi is a very impressive documentary film. The story itself is quite simple, even though many kinds of magnificent techniques are used to make it visually beautiful. At ginza, Tokyo where is the most richest area in Japan, there are a lot of very fancy sushi restaurant. Given to that, Jiro is especially one of the most expensive sushi place which cost you no less than 30,000 Japanese Yen (Equal to around $300) in 15 minutes, because the sushi chefs give you about 20 pieces of sushi in no more than 15 minutes. It is incredibly high price even for Japanese people of course.

As I mentioned, the film is visually elegant. They made deep depth of field, adjusting to the size of the Jiro Sushi restaurant, and getting nice angles to describe how they are working there. Furthermore, as editing techniques, the scene of the fish market is fast-forwarded, and when Jiro is making sushi, his hands and sushi are smoothly overlaying, drawing stream image of the Jiro sushi course. with a magnificent music, audienc feels the scene as a perfomance of an orchestra. well-considered lighting is also fruitful part. It makes sushi look like Jewelry.

This film is an extraordinary film is describing a non-fiction story of the restaurant, therefore, I got several questions. I especially have watched this film in an American theatre as Japanese audience, then I noticed that the points where Americans make laugh and I do are a little bit different. They basically make a laugh more times than I do, and particularly they were giggling at the scenes of the narrator ecplaining the price of Jiro Sushi and the restaurant is worthwhile to visit Japan even for just going there. I have no idea about the claim of Michelin, but at  least we Japanese are not so much surprised with the price. As a result, I got interest in the issue that who are supposed to watch this film and how different the attitudes of Japanese and Americans to a documentary film are. I conceive american people can accept if a documentary film is completely edited along with someone’s interestm but Japanese people are likely to hate dramatization. We, I think, udge what we see from own culture and positions, so even documentary films, which is assumed to be a true aspect of the worldm can be translated into each people’s contexts. To see the different responses to the film between american people and me was strange but interesting experience.

Anyway it was great opportunity to watch film about Japanese culture shoot by American director in American theater.