Traveling, from life to death, from Osaka to a small seaside village, across time and space. Maborosi charts the journeys we embark on, and the questions we ask along the way. The first act is of Yumiko and Ikuo, a young couple with a newborn living in Osaka. The couple are on a shared journey. One day Ikuo comes back with a bike he stole, after having his own stolen, then shortly after, he leaves for work and never comes back. Yumiko finds out that he was struck by a train, it’s speculated to be a suicide, but there was no clear motive. The rest of the film documents Yumiko’s continued life without Ikuo, she remarries, and along with her son moves to a small town with her new husband Tomoko and his daughter. There are moments of serenity and pleasure, but after a brief trip back to Osaka, the underlying and repressed grief reemerges.
What does a shared life look like when one person must carry the burden of two people? Director Kore-eda noted that he was fascinated by “memories that now only exist on one side.”
Maborosi creates a split in Yumiko’s arc between the one she shares with Ikuo and the one she continues on without him, but a few other distinctions occur too. Yumiko makes a geographic change in scenery, replacing the fast-paced city life of trains and bikes, with the slower windy roads traversed by car and feet. The film acts as a vehicle too, guiding the audience through the passage of time. With enough time and space away, Yumiko’s new journey opens up new feelings, a place for new love to grow, and new explorations to arise, but with a return to an old space, the old memories returns.
Each traveling is like a twist of a kaleidoscope, or as the title eludes to, a phantasmic light, illuminating the ways in which our treks in life change, whether due to circumstance, or due to how we reflect (and refract) upon them.
Near the end of the film, Yumiko sees and follows a funeral procession—another journey. But not necessarily a final one; we see the friends and family of the passed walking, continuing their passage while carrying the memories of their loved one. It’s here that—not necessarily resolution—completeness is found. Life is a journey, and death and the haunts that come with it are also part of that journey. Yumiko’s grief is the burden of carrying this shared pilgrimage, and while some questions remain unresolved, perhaps the purposeful journeys around her gives her the motivation to move onwards with her own.