The world is going to hell. It's something that the older generation is always saying. And I hate to think I'm getting anywhere near the older generation, but I can't deny that I've had similar thoughts. At it's heart this is a film about how whatever you do in life, you should seek perfection in it. You should try to be the best at whatever it is that you do. What a lovely goal. I'd like to think I'm luckily surrounded by a lot of people who feel this way as well. Even today my wife was thinking about going back to her classroom (she's a teacher) when she's finished maturity leave in November, and how she can reach her students even better (side note - she's got some wicked awesome ideas). I think it's true that too many people these days don't want to put any effort into the jobs that make them money, but they want lots of time off to do... whatever it is they want to do. But the old adage goes - do something you love and you'll never work. And if you hate your job, then you must really love your bills - otherwise why stay at a job you hate just to pay them? I'm sure that I'm being naive, and I'm fortunate to work in an industry that I genuinely love (there is absolutely nothing else that I'm suited to do), but I do believe that life is too short to do something that makes you unhappy.
Now to the film. It's inspiring in what I've said above, but I couldn't help but feel that it was padded a bit to get it to feature length. It was very episodic and tangential. It felt like the main thrust of it could have been summed up in a fraction of it's length, but we hung around longer for some nice shots of sushi. I'm not trying to bag on the film at all, I liked it a lot, but it was just missing that certain something that made me love it. I guess maybe I was just hoping for a bit more from his sons, or the people who work for him - but I imagine they don't get into stuff based out of respect for Jiro - not that that's a bad thing at all. And perhaps I'd heard to much about it going in that my expectations were built up. Could be a case of that. One thing I know for sure is that I'm going to have sushi for lunch tomorrow. And the other thing I know is that it's not going to be anywhere near as good as Jiro's.
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