If you have
followed my film-related ramblings for any length of time, you will have
noticed that I watch a lot – and I mean a LOT of rather random looking
documentaries. You may be amused to find out that what you read about on this blog
and elsewhere represent the tip of the iceberg. Oh yes. I am, actually, quite
selective as to which documentaries I talk to you about – you would be bored to
death of me if I wrote about every single one, variety being the spice of life
and all that jazz. So rest assured, though the name seems random and the
subject matter, well, not what you would immediately think of as prime viewing
matter, but bear with me. There are several reasons I was so impressed with
this little number from Japan.
Firstly, if
you thought the name of the documentary was a euphemism, you are sadly
mistaken. Jiro indeed does dream of sushi. But it may well behove us to know
who Jiro is, and what earthly reason he could have to dream of sushi. The man
in question is Jiro Ono. He is a master chef and at 85 still very firmly at the
helm of Sukiyabashi Jiro, a small and very exclusive restaurant that only
serves sushi. But we are talking three Michelin starred sushi here people. This
is definitely not your supermarket value platter. This, my dear friends, is
sushi well worth taking a closer look at…
In case you
don’t know me in real life, I am allergic to fish. I can barely touch the
stuff, much less eat it raw. Therefore, you might think (and indeed, I
certainly did) that sushi would not feature particularly high on things I
admire. But thanks to the cinematography of this documentary, even I had a
momentary twinge of envy as I watched the sushi being lovingly prepared. The
film pays as much attention to detail as Jiro and his staff does. The colours
are clean and crisp, we are brought up close and personal to this extraordinary
restaurant and the rather extraordinary sushi it produces.
Which is
just as well really; since we’re in Japan, you have to spend some time “getting
to know” the people in our documentary before we start to glean some truly
personal information about them. I mean, just think about the shear plethora of
“behind the scenes in the kitchen” type films, programmes and documentaries we
see on western television. The highs and the lows, the shouting, the
excitement, the adrenaline… Think Gordon Ramsey, we are taken on an emotional,
almost Hollywood movie style journey as we watch him have an emotional crisis
over rotten food, then inflicting said crisis on the unfortunate author of this
catastrophe. The food is almost an aside, what often matters is the
drama – with the exception of bona fide cookery programmes of course. Here we
focus on the food. The patience with which the apprentices have to learn every,
single solitary task to perfection down to the finest detail before taking
another – seemingly miniscule – step forward in the hierarchy. We watch Jiro,
despite his great age, forever striving to make the perfect sushi, always
improving, always experimenting…
And from
here we can spot one of the first underlying currents in this documentary.
Because I cannot imagine anyone with some form of heart and soul not being
filled with warm fuzzy feelings – and just a twinge of envy – as Jiro talks
about his craft, and what is very clearly his vocation. The joy he clearly
feels (despite being a very traditional and withdrawn 85 year – old), the
twinkle in his eyes, the unwavering determination in his voice when he talks
about the craft of making sushi is truly enviable. It is, without doubt, what
we would all want from our careers. To feel that sure it was the thing we were
born to do, to be passionate about it until the bitter end, to find strength in
it, develop it and let it develop us… Jiro is a very lucky man in many ways,
but perhaps never more so than for this particular reason…
But then we
slowly get to a second thing. A matter hinted at, shown in flickers, but
discussed with relative restraint. Jiro has two sons and unsurprisingly both
are sushi chefs like their father. The younger son now has his own restaurant,
albeit very much modelled on Sukiyabashi Jiro. His older son, traditionally
expected to take over his father’s position one day, works under his father in
the original restaurant. He is in almost in his 60s. You have to watch quite
closely to pick up on “anything” but then… Then one of the critics and friends
of the family casually drops a bombshell… I will not tell you what and if you
blink, you may very well miss it. But if you stop and think about it, it
basically… Changes everything. And says so very much about family dynamics and
how incredibly complicated they are…
Jiro dreams
of sushi was a very, very unexpected discovery for me. I most definitely did
not expect it to be so touching, beautiful or thought provoking… So don’t just
sneer at it thinking it’s oh, just another cookery programme... It’s a more. A
lot more.
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