Naomi Kawase stated that she expected to win the Golden Palm
at the 2014 Cannes film festival for her film Still the Water during a press conference but she was disappointed.
All the awards and attention were instead grabbed by the Russian film Leviathan and the Turkish film Winter Sleep, both competing with the
Japanese film for the honors. But a close evaluation proves there was very
little differentiating the three awesome films, except for the cultural differences
of the subjects in each of the three films.
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| Trees and the sea enveloping growing minds |
This critic had described Ms Kawase as the Terrence Malick
of Japan on this blog in February 2012 while reviewing her previous work Hanezu, which had lost out to Malick’s The Tree of Life at Cannes for the top
honor of 2011 at that festival. But if you ask a Japanese cineaste about
Terrence Malick he or she is likely to call Malick the ‘Kawase of USA.’ And for
good reason—Kawase’s 2007 film The
Mourning Forest was about loss of loved ones, death and regeneration, while
Malick’s 2011 film The Tree of Life also
dealt with death and reconciliation with a larger cycle of life. Both dealt
with the sun and the trees/forest. Only for Malick the loss is often of the young,
while for Kawase, the loss is often of adults. For Malick, the references are
Christian theology and scriptures; for Kawase it’s Buddhist scriptures and
shamanism. For both directors, nature
teaches humans to live a better life by observing nature, not resisting it.
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| Kyoko swims in the sea wearing her school uniform |
Still the Water begins
with visuals and sounds of the wrath of the sea only to be followed by visuals
of the quiet sea where a schoolgirl goes swimming in her school uniform. Yes,
the waters can be stilled, philosophically. What matters is our attitude.
Like most Kawase's films, there is a death of an elder that
provides the fulcrum of the film. Kawase’s choice of the beautiful Makiko
Watanabe (who plays Kyoko’s dying mother in Still the Water and a minor role of Wakako in The Mourning Forest) is laudable and elevate the quality of both
films. Preceding the death of the elder in Still
the Water is a cruel, unsavory killing of a goat by an old man watched by
a young person that almost makes you leave the auditorium unless you know
Kawase’s visuals have a purpose beyond shock and gore. The old man pats with
affection the goat that he has just killed. (This is the second important film in recent
times that begins with the graphic killing of an animal, the first being Emir
Baigazin’s Kazhak film Harmony Lessons
(2013), winner of a Silver Bear at the Berlin film festival, only to be followed by a contrarian humanist story.) While the gore repulses the viewer, the films
use these scenes to prepare the viewer for deeper thought as the films unspool.
The death of goat/sheep is contrasted with peaceful death of young Kyoko’s
lovely mother dying in the company of her caring husband and daughter from an
unspecified disease. The ‘waters’ of the film are metaphorically stilled. “Mother’s soul will be part of you,”
Kyoko is told in consolation. A large banyan tree, occupies some space in the movie's script and visuals, with drooping branches and
aerial prop roots that grows into thick woody trunks making it difficult to
distinguish them from the main trunk.
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| Wisdom of the elders for the young |
Much of Kawase’s films have autobiographical touches.
Kawase’s father had abandoned her when she was young and she was brought up by
her grandmother. In Still the Water, the
young shy boy Kaito, is being raised by his mother after his father has left
the village to live in the city blaming the circumstances on ‘fate’. Thus both
the youngsters in the film suffer from a missing parent whom they love. The
girl loves the sea, while the boy is afraid of water. Early in the film a wise
old man comments: “These kids don’t know what lies in the sea.” Animate and inanimate
objects have relevance in the films of Malick and Kawase in equal measure. Both are visual poets of nature, life and
death.
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| Halcyon days: Father, daughter, and the sick mother during a light interlude |
Kawase’s handling of Kyoko’s mother’s death is truly unforgettable.
The mother, a shaman, dies holding her daughter’s hand as the villagers sing the
mother’s favorite song. Friends come to sing and dance as the mother dies
reminiscent of an Irish wake.
For Kawase, memory of successive generations lives in trees and
forests (The Mourning Forest and Still the Water), and rocks (Hanezu) and life is eternal (the
arachnids of Hanezu and roots of the
banyan trees in Still the Water.) The most interesting line Kawase provides in Still the Water is “Young people
should be brave to leave us elders to pick up the pieces.”
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| The banyan tree as a metaphor of life |
The tale of life, death and love as it affects two young
people in a Japanese village on the forlorn island of Amami is scripted by the
Japanese director herself. The appeal of what she provides as cinematic visuals
and storyline could be eclectic to Occidental viewers but it would appeal more
to the Oriental mind that seeks spiritual connection with nature and respects
the forces of nature. She might not have
won the admiration of Cannes with Still
the Water but this work is her most engaging work since she made The Mourning Forest. The love tale of the boy and the girl is
submerged by the sea of philosophical thought the film attempts to provide.
Most other directors would have been inclined to do just the opposite. The unknown killer of Kyoko’s mother’s lover
is never revealed. The detail is
peripheral for Kawase; instead the effect of the death on other characters is more important for
her. That is where we need to admire Kawase, she is different from the regular
filmmaker. For this critic, Kawase is
the finest living active filmmaker of Japan today.
P.S. Kawase’s earlier films
Hanezu and The Mourning Forest have
been reviewed in detail earlier on this blog. Still
the Water is one of the author’s top 10 films of 2014. Ms Kawase is also one of the author's 15 favourite active filmmakers.
