It's hardly surprising that gaman ("perseverance") is the watchword of many a local movie. Just as their heroes gut through to glory in film after film, real-life Japanese endure everything from deadly natural disasters to boring meetings, telling each other to ganbaro ("keep trying"). How admirable, this national stoicism!
But sometimes the smartest, if toughest, thing to do is quit. You know that you are never going to be a major league slugger or concert pianist, even after years of do-or-die effort. You accept being a loser because the alternative is more wasted time, more painful confirmation of your own mediocrity.
This sort of turning point, as common in real life as death or taxes, is understandably seldom the theme of commercial films, since the audience is paying for hope, however distant, not unpleasant truth. So Keisuke Yoshida's "Bashauma-san to Bigmouth (The Workhorse and the Bigmouth)," which makes quietly powerful drama out its heroine's floundering career (or rather non-career) as a scriptwriter, is an outlier.