Butler's Cinema Scene

Jiro…surrounded by his creations

“JIRO DREAMS OF SUSHI” My rating: B (Opening April 6 at the Tivoli)

81 minutes | MPAA rating: PG

I’ve always been a bit dubious about sushi. (Raw eel? Really?)

But David Gelb’s documentary “Jiro Dreams of Sushi” had my mouth watering for a slice of tuna on perfectly cooked rice and with a delicate brushing of specially-formulated soy sauce.

Yum.

The Jiro of the title is 85-year-old Jiro Ono, a sushi master whose tiny restaurant is in the basement of a Tokyo office building adjacent to the Ginza subway station. The place isn’t terribly much to look at – just 10 seats, all at the counter. No candles. No romantic booths. It’s sort of like a classic American lunch joint.

Yet a meal for one person at Jiro’s three-star Michelin Guide establishment costs nearly $400 and the place is booked a month in advance. That’s because day after day, year after year, Jiro make the best sushi in the world, working in raw fish and seaweed the way a master painter works in oils and canvas.

It’s safe to say that Jiro is obsessed with sushi. He hates spending a day away from the restaurant. He raised his two sons to be sushi masters. He is forever coming up with new menus and experimenting with new ways of preparing traditional dishes.

He has been doing this practically nonstop since the age of 10. You wonder how he ever found the time to father children.

We get to meet his oldest son, Yoshikazu, who has been working at his father’s side his entire adult life and who will inherit the restaurant. Also the younger son, Takashi, who has opened his own restaurant, which is — literally — a mirror image of the old man’s (because Jiro is left handed and Takashi is right handed).

We spend some time with Tokyo’s premier restaurant critic – a huge fan – and with the apprentices who toil for up to 10 years juggling steaming hot towels before Jiro even lets them hold a knife. And there are Jiro’s suppliers in fish and rice, men who are experts in their little corner of the culinary world and who are proud to have a master like Jiro using their product.

Gelb, who also photographed the film, takes side trips to Tokyo’s sprawling seafood market (think hundreds of 300-pound tunas lined up like clay soldiers in a Chinese emperor’s tomb) and to a cemetery where Jiro rather perfunctorily tends to his parents’ graves, noting that they never did much for him. That’s one of the few truly personal moments in the film…Jiro can sure talk sushi but when it comes to revealing the inner man he’s not particularly forthcoming.

This is all presented with a sort of cinema-Zen approach – the film is unhurried and reflective and drifting, set to a soundtrack of noodling Philip Glass piano pieces.

“Jiro Dreams of Sushi” may be at its decadent best when it comes to the scenes of the chefs preparing their signature dishes. Gelb’s camera dwells lovingly on each small but colorful fishy confection.

Don’t go to this one hungry.

| Robert W. Butler