Moe no Suzaku

It is said that a fundamental human activity such as film viewing is essentially an individual experience as there are some films which have to be appreciated by being boisterous.Moe No Suzaku is an offbeat Japanese film that needs to be appreciated in silence.As Kawase Naomi hails from a documentary film background,one can sense a certain hint of documentary film culture in her film especially in the manner how faces of the protagonists have been filmed to achieve a palpable confusion of sentiments.The same thing can be said as the entire film takes place in a remote mountainous village situated in rural Japan. Although this film is largely autobiographical in nature adequate narrative sequences have been added by Naomi Kawase to make it inventive.She shows how ancient traditions have still not disappeared from Japanese villages.We get a chance to see that people can remain happy even by living in coexistence with nature in a small village.Moe No Suzaku would also appeal to many people as a tranquil love story of people who remain unaffected by disturbing emotions.

I recently watched this film in a film class. Naomi Kawase has managed to combine portrait photography, documentary film, and video production with a spiritual narrative told more through silence and patience rather than intense dialogue and action. Patience is a required trait while watching this film as it uses darkness and stillness in a non-dramatic way quite often. You really must experience this film if you are fond of silent films, documentaries on Japan, or stories of family. This film is not a documentary, but her production/directing style is very similar due to the fact the entire cast, minus the leading female role, are non-actors and actual citizens of the town it was shot in.

Best/Worst Comparison: The Tibetan Book of the Dead - BBC Documentary

My favorite element: The song on the record which I assume is by Masamichi Shigeno.

The other day I saw a film called Baraka that tried so desperately for a spiritual landscape and ended with a glossy postcard, then I turn to this, a simple unknown film about family, and find a spiritual landscape worth pouring into, modest but deep; cinematic Zen of the sort I'm looking for.

Roughly bookended by shots of blossoming nature and the happy cries of children playing hide-and-seek rising to the sky, it's about a certain worldview of life. A family gets together, weaving a life for us to inhabit for a short time. Threads already extend outwards from there even before anything has happened—a mother who has abandoned her child, a grandfather who was lost in the war. In the end one of by one the family-members part, each who knows to exactly where.

This is the Buddhist transient life, not some fated drama but a fleeting game of hide-and-seek; isn't this what we do, come together for the occasion, in a house, in a veranda, and go out again? Our visual eye never dwells on misery. The quiet unfolding is not rigorously set like Ozu used to do, it's casually nudged. I think I'd ask you to watch this just for the evocative spatiality of the thing, not a formal beauty but finding a quietly intimate center and allowing a world to sketch its own distance outwards. More obviously seen in the shots of far hillside nature framed from a veranda, but it appears again and again.

Watching this is to get the sense that life extends from the frame, it is not confined to it.

And I'd ask you to watch it for the quiet metaphysical touches, I'm talking about that faint sense in the visual field that the images narrate the self, the skies returning the gaze. As the mother walks from the house after the father's death, prefiguring her eventual leave, the nephew walks after her crying her name—suddenly it rains. The filmmaker would build a whole other film around this moment, her marvelous Sharasojyu.

Yes there is some pretty overt symbolism about loss and change in the tunnels and trains that won't pass, overt only in this context. But I know I will return to it again and again for the sense of journey, the coming together of loved ones and inevitable going again, the quiet evocation that finds a slightly sad, slightly bemused spiritual wonder in the things around us—everything here reflects a worldview I hold dear.

It's all in that marvelous last floating release of the camera from the sleeping (dying?) grandmother who has seen it all, sending us out.

It reminds me of one of my favorite Chinese poems:

'When the heart is far away, the land bends there of itself. Picking chrysanthemums beneath the eastern hedge, I look out leisurely at the southern mountains. The mountains' energy is fresh and clean both day and night. Birds fly home in pairs. Within all this there is a deep meaning. I want to express it, but I've already forgotten the words.'

Something to meditate upon.

It's been a number of years since I've seen this film, but since no-one else has commented on it, I thought it was worth saying: This is a lyrical and beautiful film. It is classically Japanese in its stylism: Slow moving and quiet (with the ever present humming of cicadas in the background), taking full advantage of the location - Unspoilt mountain beauty captured in splendid panorama shots and vivid colour. The tale of a family slowly being forced away from their traditional life-style is told with moving poignancy. I found Moe no suzaku to be richly satisfying and encourage you to get your hands on it if possible.

Sublime. The most delicate film of Kawase that I have seen. Death/suicide only indirectly shown. No sex, only platonic love. Criticism of money wasted on projects never completed. The English title: The God Suzaku. Wonderful body movements of actors and camera movements. Poetic. Intelligent use of music and sound. Kawase's original script. Very good casting.