Naomi Kawase is one of the most
interesting female film directors alive and actively making films. Her films
are slow moving, contemplative works that discuss the close relationship of
families, of religion, of tradition, and of nature. An overarching common
factor for most of her films is the inevitable cycles of life and death.
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| A twin brother running after other twin for no apparent reason, early in the film (Note: Shun is touching the wall, as he would touch parked cars later in the run as his brother does) |
Shara is an intimate portrait of two contemporary nuclear Japanese families
living in the old Japanese town of Nara with narrow streets, barely more than
the width of a large car and yet one sees cars of many sizes parked off the narrow
streets. There is tradition and there is modernity—a conflict that is often tangentially
discussed in Kawase’s films.
The two families have
similarities. Both have had a male member suddenly leave/disappear. (In one
case, the viewer is told, a young boy was found dead—without additional
explanations, while in the other family a married man disappears after a child
is born to his sick wife). In both
families, the disappearance of the male member affects another member of the
family deeply. A sister wears the slippers/clogs of her missing male brother;
the other young boy paints the portrait of his missing dead brother from memory.
The daughter of one family is drawn to the son of the other—and both are
students.
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| The run in reverse, the surviving twin, Shun, with childhood friend Yu |
Students and young love are
recurring themes for director Nawase [e.g., Still the Water (2014), An/Sweet
Bean (2015)]. So is death of loved ones {e.g., Mourning Forest (2007), Still
the Water, An/Sweet Bean] and
the dead set of lovers in Hanezu (2011)
compared and contrasted with a living pair. There is birth and pregnancy in Kawase’s
films as well (Shara has a lovely
childbirth sequence and pregnancy is pivotal in Hanezu).
Kawase is also of one of the few
directors today who consistently discuss positive interactions between the
young and the old in most of her films. And finally, there are the constant
references to nature (the forest in Mourning
Forest, the sea in Still the Water,
the cherry trees in An/Sweet Bean,
the vegetable and flower garden in Shara
and the mountains, spiders and other arachnids in Hanezu. In Shara, growing green eggplants in the kitchen garden with tender loving care becomes a metaphor for the love within the family, a feeling that well-meaning neighbours can appreciate.
This critic has often described Ms
Kawase as the Terrence Malick of Japan and one is not sure if Ms Kawase would
consider that to be a compliment as she lost out to Malick at a Cannes
competition. The common factors between Malick and Kawase are too many to
ignore. Malicks’ The Tree of Life
and Nawase’s Shara deal with death of a young boy in the family and consequent extended bereavement. Both films deal with childbirth. Malick’s Knight of Cups and Kawase’s Shara both deal with closeness of siblings. All the works
of Malick and Kawase, deal with metaphors of nature mirroring life. Both
discuss their respective religions and their importance in living and moving on
despite traumatic loss of loved ones. Both directors have a penchant for
underscoring memories of precious events in individuals’ lives. Both directors prefer to film their own written original screenplays though both have adapted others' works in rare instances.
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| Blooming of Yu as a woman she leads the dancers of the Shara festival |
Unlike Malick’s films that depend
on voice-overs, much of Kawase’s films can be associated with a lack of spoken
words. Wind, rain, waves, shadows and light are more important for Kawase than
spoken lines. Traditional religious songs and chants take up long sequences in Shara, Still the Water and Hanezu.
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| Buddhist chants as a rope is revolved around by hands of devotees young and old to the sound of chants |
Obviously for Kawase young people riding bicycles are important. The similarity of such shots in several Kawase’s films is too obvious for a viewer to miss. Now Nara has a lot of automobiles parked in front of their houses. Yet never during the entire length of Shara, shot entirely in Nara, was a car, bus or truck shown moving on screen. There is one shot of a two-wheeled moped in action. That was the single sign of automation in the entire film.
Shara has two important sequences where young people are running.
Early in the film we are shown two brothers (twins?) running through empty
streets touching parked cars. Towards the end of the film two youngsters –a
girl and a boy run on similar empty streets.
Though the runs are visually striking and important sequences, the lack
of people and vehicles on the route make the runs almost dreamlike and
unreal. One wonders if that was Kawase’s
intention as the entire camera movements of the film Shara appears as though it were a perspective of an individual who recollects
the past events.
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| Traditional amulets from Yu to Shun (In Kawase's films it is the women who initiates, not men) |
Shara is important for Kawase watchers as this is a rare film in
which she acts in a major role, directs, provides the original script, and
serves as one of the three co-editors. In this film, viewers see Kawase first
as a slim young mother of twin boys, and later, for most of the film, as an
older housewife in an advanced stage of
pregnancy who delivers a child capturing the entire event.
Shara is equally important because it does not spoon-feed the
viewer. A diligent viewer of the film will note the perspective provided by the
camera movements as the film opens and later in the closing stages when the
camera behaves like an intelligent being that seems to quietly intrude and
inspect the activities just as Aleksandr Sokurov’s camera in his famous Russian Ark (2002), a film made just a year before
Shara. It also indicates why Shun’s (the main boy) brother Kei’s strange
unexplained death is never shown on screen but evidently is well accepted by
the families.
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| For the perceptive viewer: Yu (Shun's girlfriend) walks by the same wall Shun touched 17 years ago, on the initial run, when he lost his twin brother |
Kawase’s writing accomplishes two
things. One is to provide scope for the camera to “talk” and move as a human
interloper and the second is to ensure participation of an entire town in an
energetic, ritualistic song and dance on the street. The latter exercise
provides an avenue for traditions to be continued by younger people and for
young Yu (the girl) to bloom as a lady both in the eyes of her foster mother Shouko
(a strikingly beautiful and elegant Japanese actress, Kanako Higuchi). That
sequence provides action and energy in a film bereft of action except for the
two running sequences.
What does the title Shara mean, one could ask? My friend Michael Kerpan was kind enough to inform me that the original Japanese title of the film Sharasoju could mean sandalwood/sandalwood incense or even a sal tree. One wonders why the film is called Shara when its meaning is not clear to non-Japanese audiences.
For the lazy viewer, Shara will indeed appear to be dreary, pointless film. Kawase
merges spirituality and nature in a unique way, film after film. For the
attentive viewer, Shara will prove to be a
clever and delightful film where the viewer is encouraged to ponder over minute details and savour them. Every work of Kawase is amazing and Shara is no exception.
P.S. This critic has reviewed
Kawase’s Mourning Forest (2007),
Hanezu (2011) Still the Water (2014) and An/Sweet Bean (2015) on the blog. (You can access each review by clicking on the
names of the films). So are reviews of the Malick films The Tree of Life and Knight of Cups, mentioned in the above review. Mourning Forest is included on the author’s top 15 films of the 21st Century. Ms Kawase is also one of the author's 15 favourite active filmmakers (see list at
