MOVIE REVIEWS : A PAEAN TO OLD-FASHIONED FAMILY LIFE

Keisuke Kinoshita’s “Big Joys, Small Sorrows” (at the Kokusai) is a charmingly apt title for an unabashedly sentimental and old-fashioned paean to the enduring virtues of family life. It’s the 48th film by the 73-year-old director--and a remake of his 28th.

Spanning 1973 to the present, it tells of a lighthouse keeper (Go Kato), his devoted, resilient wife (Reiko Ohara) and how their lives change as they’re transferred from one lighthouse to the next, their three children growing up--and Kato’s father (Kunioi Konishi) growing old.

The film is also a tribute to the Maritime Service Agency, which is Japan’s Coast Guard and which clearly cooperated substantially in the film’s making. It is also a gorgeous travelogue, suggesting how all the wonderful, unspoiled beauty spots on Japan’s coastlines are accessible via All Nippon Airways, which gets a big plug in the picture.

Yet for all such tie-ins and the contrivances they entail, “Big Joys, Small Sorrows” becomes surprisingly affecting because it is so personal.

The key figure is unquestionably the grandfather who at first seems tiresome but is also sweet and finally heroic as he accepts mortality with a fine comic sense of the absurd combined with a genuine gratitude to his caring family. “How lucky can a man get?,” he asks when his son asks him to come live with him--and we find ourselves agreeing with the grandfather.

“Big Joys, Small Sorrows” comes out strongly in favor of respect for one’s elders and for the sustaining strength of the family at a time when even in Japan such traditional values and institutions have been eroding for years.

It’s hard to rank “Big Joys, Small Sorrows” (Times-rated Family) as more than a minor work of a major director, considered as one of his country’s greatest film makers.

‘BIG JOYS, SMALL SORROWS’ A Shochiku presentation. Producers Nobuyoshi Ohtani/Soya Hikida; Kazuo Watanabe/Masatake Wakita. Writer-director Keisuke Kinoshita. Camera Kozo Okazaki. Music Chuji Kinoshita. Art director Nobutaka Yoshino. Film editor Yoshi Sugihara. With Go Kato, Reiko Ohara, Yoko Shinoyamna, Hayao Okamoto, Kunio Konishi, Hitoshi Ueki, Misako Konno, Kiichi Nakai, Ken Tanaka. In Japanese, with English subtitles.

Running time: 2 hours, 10 minutes.

Times-rated: Family.