Jiro Dreams of Sushi

Jiro dreams of Sushi: documentary exploring the life of 85-year-old sushi master and his modest, Michelin 3-star restaurant. Being the titular character, it is mostly centered around Jiro, who is an intriguing person with an admirable lifelong passion & pursuit to continually improve and create sushi dishes that get as close to perfection as possible. It’s interesting that his suppliers also had an emphasis on mastering their craft and techniques. We see Jiro as a worker, businessman and parent – although you couldn’t help but feel for the elder son, having such a great legacy towering over him, and such large geta shoes to fill! Some of the shots are absolutely sushi-porn, if you have a taste for the stuff there’s no way you’ll survive this without an appetite by the end – more generally, the whole film’s well shot with some nice use of tilt-shift/time-lapse etc to break up the indoor interviews. What’s more interesting than the sushi aspect is the insight into Japanese traditions (like eldest son stepping up to father’s job) and general work ethic and wisdom of someone with a lifetime of experience. We see a lot of scaling, peeling, slicing, gutting, massaging, pasting… for something that simple, it’s intriguing to see how much work, thought and preparation goes in to it. Jiro Dreams of Sushi is a really good documentary, but it never really goes anywhere due to he micro nature of the subject – he opens talking about striving for perfection, and closes in a similar manner.

Score: 7/10