Film Screening: The Mourning Forest

DESCRIPTION

Naomi Kawase’s magical drama about overcoming grief.

Young Japanese woman Machiko begins working at a retirement home. One of the residents is the wilful and unpredictable Shigeki. His wife died 33 years ago, and every day is filled with longing for his lost love. Machiko’s past also bears the traces of a painful loss. A series of absurd events leads them into the forest, which turns out to be a journey toward healing.

The premiere of The Mourning Forest took place in Nara, the Japanese prefecture where Kawase has lived all her life and where the film was shot. In the same year, the film was awarded the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival, and the director was hailed as a new classic of Japanese cinema, with her works compared to those of Takeshi Kitano and Takashi Miike.

Naomi Kawase was originally a documentary maker, as can be seen in The Mourning Forest. She cast non-professional actors in the film and employed techniques typical of the reality genre. When filming people, cinematographer Hideyo Nakano uses his camera like the tool of a scrupulous documentary maker who observes his characters from a position of concealment. The camera behaves differently in its view of nature. Gazing at the monumental landscape and the multi-layered forest, it glorifies its subject, sometimes retreating to a respectful distance. In one scene, a laughing Machiko tries to catch up with Shigeki, who, playing with her, hides in a labyrinth of plants. The camera is still, and we can see only the space of this improvised game rather than being able to focus on the characters, who appear to be busy and unimportant in a place where the main role is that of nature.

The pain of loss that links the two characters is depicted by Kawase as a constant struggle, with the secret pain of Machiko and the visible, almost performative pain of Shigeki. She transforms the process of healing into something of a rite, which the girl and old man experience together. Imitating a shallow grave and falling asleep there, they are reborn, leaving their pain in the earth. This rituality can also be seen in Kawase’s best-known documentary Sky, Wind, Fire, Water, Earth, which she made 6 years before The Mourning Forest. The main character is Naomi herself, who is trying to establish a connection with the dead father she barely knew. She invents a ritual in which she has a copy of her father’s tattoo made on her back and fearlessly shows it to the viewer, transforming the link with her parent into a physical fact.

The film will be shown in Japanese with Russian subtitles.

After the screening there will be a discussion of the film with a Garage mediator during which viewers can exchange opinions and ideas about what they have seen. The discussion will be constructed as a dialogue of equals in which the impressions and thoughts of every participant are important. The mediator will gently direct and moderate the conversation. The meeting will last one hour. Participation is free.