Jiro Dreams of Sushi
That doing the same work for fifty years does not get boring, it gets harder.
- Director
- David Gelb
- Year
- 2011
- Runtime
- 81 min
It looks like a documentary about a sushi master but it is really a film about repetition. Jiro makes the same ten pieces every day and after sixty years still finds something to correct.
The scene that stayed with me is the rice: an apprentice washes rice and nothing else for five years. Software has no learning path with that much patience in it; we say “senior” after three months. The first time I watched it I found that romantic. Now I read it more as a definition of expertise: you are a master when you know how many different ways the work can go wrong.
Its weakness is that the film glides too gently over what this life costs. What the sons describe is not as lovely as the framing suggests.