The Old Testament “song” in the title, “drama” in the genre graph, all this is completely wrong.
Excuse me, what drama? Densely mixed with nostalgia lamp everyday life, that's what it is. Disarmingly pastoral cinema, albeit not without a pinch of doubts and turmoil.
The plot is simple. Vataru is an amateur photographer who comes to his hometown to collect material for an article and prove his professional suitability. There he, imagine, meets a classmate who used to be in love with him, and now the head of the choir. What a twist!
The film runs for 75 minutes and is not very rich in events. So, I’ll go straight to morality: love your little homeland! Here Wataru went for the bird of happiness in the spiritless Tokyo, and she – then, it turns out, was much closer. And with it, vocation and love, beach and tangerines.
I have always loved the concept of near happiness. And the film is just great and the actors are good, but ... social advertising smells a little bit, right? Too easy, too conflictless and unambiguous. The case when you really want to praise and agree, but your own experience says otherwise.
I was 15 years old and practically lived in a village. It's certainly not as heavenly as the movie, but for me, it was the best place on earth. It's not good to be there now. The house has changed, people have changed, and the beloved cat has long since died. I’m one of those people who think that it’s dangerous and almost always painful to go back to places of past happiness, so I found The Song of Beginnings a bit far-fetched and posterish. But my mother, for example, likes to say that a house is a house, for her it would probably be close.
And yet, the viewing brought a lot of pleasure. Reason? To be sure, he is the man before whose smile the wall of Jericho will fall. And as if that wasn't enough, he also plays the piano! No wonder the girl spent 15 years in standby mode, I would agree to 30.
7 out of 10