Watching documentaries isn't really being my thing but that doesn't mean I can't appreciate watching a good one, from time to time. I can still easily get grabbed by certain subject matters and the subject for this documentary was being quite intriguing as well, though I have never eaten sushi in my life.
I didn't necessarily saw this documentary as one about sushi but more one about striving for perfection, day in day out and devote yourself entirely to just one thing in life. Striving for perfection is the best motivation and something that can keep you going. Thing about it is that you just never can be sure when you have reached your top, so every day is a new challenge to surpass the previous one.
It perhaps sounds like a very serious documentary but in fact it's being a perfectly light and pleasant one to watch. This also has a downside though, since this actually means that the movie never really goes deep enough into certain aspects. I for instance still don't know what Jiro Ono's initial motivation was to become a sushi chef and how he ended up being so big and respected in his line of business eventually. After finishing watching this documentary I also had the feeling I still knew very little about his personality and personal life. But this probably also has some to do with the Japanese culture, in which people just aren't all that open and hardly ever show their true thoughts and emotions, at least not on camera. There isn't being any 'conflict' in this documentary. Everybody is saying nothing but good and positive things, while you feel that there are much more underlying going on between Jiro and his sons but the documentary really doesn't elaborate or go deeper into any of this.
It didn't prevented this documentary from being a good and interesting one though. It was still fascinating to see all the work and preparations that goes into making sushi and how Ono and his apprentices, including his oldest son, constantly keep maintaining the same high standards of quality and constantly are eager looking for ways to improve their products and their own skills.
Thing that also definitely make this a good watch is its visual style. It's an extremely well shot documentary, with some great camera-work as well as editing in it. It makes this perhaps feel more like a movie, rather than a documentary but in this case I say that as a good thing.
I definitely had a good time watching this documentary but at the same time by the end of it, I didn't really feel that I got enough out of it.
7/10
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