THE MOURNING FOREST
Japan, 2007, 97minutes, Colour.
Directed by Naomi Kawase
The Mourning Forest is a quiet, meditative film that has some lively sequences and some comedy, but is, finally, a contemplation of love, memory and death. This is the mark of many of Naomi Kawase’s films. Early in this film, a distinction is made by a Buddhist teacher between ordinary living and the meaning of being alive.
When a young woman who has lost her child in an accident goes to work in a home for the elderly situated near a beautiful forest, she becomes the target of an old resident who interprets her actions as trying to be like his late wife. However, with the help of the head caregiver who tells her that there are no rules in the running of the home, she befriends the old man with whom she plays games (including hiding in the rows of hillside greenery).
The film then becomes a two-hander as the young woman takes the old man for a drive. When they are stranded, he runs off into the forest and she has to run hard to keep up. They stay in the forest (and her mobile phone can get no signal) until the old man reaches his goal, his wife’s grave. There is great pathos in this experience of the old man and of the woman who has become attached to him. She is left reflecting on what has happened and what it means to him and to her as she listens to the melody from his music box.
A gentle and genteel focus on life and death.
1. The director and the delicacy of her work? Her themes? The meaning of life? Poetic?
2. The Japanese religious background, the reflections, the sayings, the Buddhist teachings?
3. Life, its meaning, life as lived, philosophical aspects of life? Real life? For the beauty of the visuals, the credits in the forest, the title, the forests and the trees, the water, the musical score, the piano?
5. Nachico and her arrival, her work, the advisor and her encouragement, there being no rules, Nachico looking, listening, with the old man – and his attack on her, thinking that she was substituting for his wife?
6. Nachico’s husband, their talk, the death of their child, her letting the hand go, their grief, her husband’s stern stand?
7. The group work, play, the view of the other guests, the instructor?
8. Nachico and the old man, the game of hiding in the fields?
9. The drive, his being content, the disabling of the car, her search for the old man, running, out of breath? The old man running, the pursuit?
10. The sheer delight in the walk?
11. The rain, the flood, Nachico’s fear of losing the old man, her anxiety? His not being drowned?
12. The old man and his search, finding his wife’s grave, the documents and his burying them? Imagining dancing with his wife?
13. Nachico watching him, the old man and his death, the music box, the long finale of Nachico listening to the music and raising her eyes to heaven?
14.The meaning of the title, mourning, the period of mourning, grief and the end of the period of mourning?
