Cha no Aji(2004) or 'The Taste of Tea' by Katsuhito Ishii is a movie you always wanted to see but never knew.
So simple and elegent you might just say it goes nowhere or has no basic plot but the way it is presented doesn't remind you that you even wanted them in the first place and are able to enjoy it with the flow.
The taste of tea does not tell us about the taste of tea as the name suggests rather it tells us about the vivid taste and stories of an eccentric family and all its members, with various small arcs going simultaneously telling us about their daily aspirations, dreams and hopes.
Unlike Nobuhiko Obayashi movies That have a lot of crazy and surreal visual gags and effects, this movie also incorporates the use of them but to a smaller more humanly extent so that it does become an LSD driven crazy movie rather a sweethearted piece of visual elegent storytelling.
The characters are simple, their dreams are simple and their lives are also pleasent but the way they are represented to us via ozu like Cinematography, Elegent Soundtrack and creative direction ; all makes these film worthwhile and not deluded in its own self and like films of Edward Yang, Yasujiro Ozu, Abbas Kiarostami, we don't even realise when the 140 min movie has passed and we sit there waiting for even more, just to live or experience the lives of the characters even more.
It may not be Poetic cimema or any other name you call art-house films or commercial or fight Cinema but it is a type of film that you should watch once in a while that makes you forget your tensions and provide you with nostalgia and calm.
So simple and elegent you might just say it goes nowhere or has no basic plot but the way it is presented doesn't remind you that you even wanted them in the first place and are able to enjoy it with the flow.
The taste of tea does not tell us about the taste of tea as the name suggests rather it tells us about the vivid taste and stories of an eccentric family and all its members, with various small arcs going simultaneously telling us about their daily aspirations, dreams and hopes.
Unlike Nobuhiko Obayashi movies That have a lot of crazy and surreal visual gags and effects, this movie also incorporates the use of them but to a smaller more humanly extent so that it does become an LSD driven crazy movie rather a sweethearted piece of visual elegent storytelling.
The characters are simple, their dreams are simple and their lives are also pleasent but the way they are represented to us via ozu like Cinematography, Elegent Soundtrack and creative direction ; all makes these film worthwhile and not deluded in its own self and like films of Edward Yang, Yasujiro Ozu, Abbas Kiarostami, we don't even realise when the 140 min movie has passed and we sit there waiting for even more, just to live or experience the lives of the characters even more.
It may not be Poetic cimema or any other name you call art-house films or commercial or fight Cinema but it is a type of film that you should watch once in a while that makes you forget your tensions and provide you with nostalgia and calm.