A mouth-watering but utterly flavorless documentary about one of the most acclaimed sushi chefs in the world (and arguably the most famous), Matt Tyrnauer’s “Nobu” is such a fawning portrait of Nobu Matsuhisa that it feels like it should only be available to watch on a DVD sold at the gift shops in the restaurateur’s hotels.
To that point, the simple fact that Matsuhisa’s empire has grown to include hotels is one of the only things I learned from this generously portioned film about his life, which is sweeter and less satisfying than Nobu’s signature dish of black cod in three-day-old miso paste, even if it takes almost as long to marinate.
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Not that I’ve actually had Nobu’s signature dish, or any of its others, for that matter. As will likely be the case for most viewers, Tyrnaeur’s love letter to Matsuhisa is the closest I’ll ever get to eating at one of Nobu’s 56 different locations — the chef’s lifelong commitment to the freshest ingredients doesn’t come cheap, and this film about him takes pains to insist that hyper-franchising the brand has diminished its namesake’s emphasis on quality.
In that context, it’s hard not to enjoy drooling over this documentary’s abundant food porn, even if Tyrnauer seems more invested in the lifestyle porn that Matsuhisa is happy to flaunt in his mid-70s (I rolled my eyes at his private jet, only to bug them out at the beautiful sushi bars he’s built inside all his various houses). That emphasis doesn’t quite square with the ethos of Matsuhisa’s restaurants, where sushi is meant to be the star of the show and the sushi bars are slightly elevated above the dining room, like a stage. However, it does align with the chef’s natural inclination toward the finer things in life. In some ways, “Nobu” is more like “Jiro Dreams of Sushi” than any other film ever made. In others, it seems different as could be.
Matsuhisa is certainly a lot more extroverted and gregarious than Jiro Ono, to the point that it’s hard to tell if Tyrnaeur (“Where’s My Roy Cohn?”) set out to make a puff piece, or if he was charmed into submission by his subject along the way. Whatever the case, the guy is a great hang, and “Nobu” excels in the rare moments when it eschews the overcooked trappings of its subgenre — the breathy quotes about the meaning of food, the genuflective speed-run through the major events of a chef’s life, the effusive talking heads who liken them to Picasso — in favor of a more natural glimpse at the man behind the mononym.
Which isn’t to say that Matsuhisa’s story is uninteresting; while this particular telling of it might be far too breezy for its own good, his journey from failure to success — from Japan to Peru, Anchorage, and then finally Los Angeles, where he met his most loyal customer and future business partner Robert De Niro — is a fine tale of self-belief in the face of serious setbacks. He credits his wife for saving him. Their daughter speaks well about the unusual but fiercely loving family her parents created alongside their fortune.
The film’s second half even makes a couple of efforts to complicate that triumph, both of which indicate the more substantive documentaries that Tyrnaeur might have made instead. In one thread, Matsuhisa laments the suicide of his oldest friend, and blames himself for not being more available when they needed his support. In another, Tyrnaeur’s camera is a fly on the wall during a contentious business meeting about the latest expansion of Nobu. To invoke Frederick Wiseman here would overinflate this movie’s patience for sitting with such things, but the scene is strikingly “real” in the context of a film that otherwise feels hyper-constructed (it’s possible that “Cindy Rice” inspiration Cindy Crawford just happened to swing by Nobu when cameras were rolling, but I tend to doubt it), and it gets a jolt of fresh energy from an agitated De Niro, who hasn’t been this animated on camera in years.
But “Nobu” isn’t much interested in the future of Matsuhisa’s business, or in the looming specter of his retirement. On the contrary, this film is content to offer a nice and glossy celebration of a likable man who stumbled into great success by sticking to his childhood dream of making good sushi, and became a brand unto himself somewhere along the way. Tyrnauer’s doc is little more than an extension of — in addition to an advertisement for — that brand, and, for better or worse, it certainly leaves you hungry for more by the time it’s over.
Grade: C+
Vertical Entertainment will release “Nobu” in NYC on Friday, June 27. A national rollout will begin on Friday, July 4.
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