subdee

I think that some of the weirdness of the film (juxtaposition of the haves and the have nots) is because it is written from the mindset or point of view of Seita. From his point of view, the aunt seems more cruel than she probably was. Probably she was just a hard pragmatic woman looking after her own. I think that the various better off people (the child singing with her mother about going home, the sisters going back to their rich house) were symbolic figures of how others would appear to a small starving boy. The girls returning home seemed like something between a dream and a nightmare. A deeply disturbing film...