A sad tale of first love I have words of love
I didn't say.
Only in the heart is deep.
Flows without running out,
River of Love.
Tsurayuki Ki
The name Keisuke Kinoshita is widely known in narrow circles of domestic film lovers, in contrast to his picture, the first to reach the Soviet audience, mysteriously breaking through the Iron Curtain. Old-timers will not remember such lines lined up for a ticket to the cinema. Except that the human chain with coupons for limited alcohol was a little longer. And yet, it will not be about the Legend of Narayama, but about the tape shot three years earlier. It was based on the first prose novel Nogiku no Haka, a classic of Japanese tank poetry by Sachio Ito. Compared to the book, the time frame of the film is extended. The story follows a 73-year-old man who carried the memory of his first love through his life. Slowly flows the river, against the current of which sails in a boat old Masao, going back to the past. The theme of the comeback is deeply personal to Keisuke Kinoshita, and is found in many of his films. Just as smooth and unhurried is the story told to the boatman, and with him to the viewer. A sad story about feelings as pure, undisturbed as water in a mountain river.
The life of Masao and Tamiko was without much care. The children were not only cousins, but siblings. Mom loved her son, and she loved her niece. Until then, their friendship was unquestionable, but everything changed as soon as the girl was 17 and the boy was 15. Since then, people in the village can not hide, there are no secrets in the village. And in a village lost among the Japanese mountains, and even more so. Even going to the mountains or working in the open field, they felt like they were in a closed space. There were always a couple of bad eyes, and far-fetched rumors spread around instantly. Masao and Tamiko did not understand the reason for this change. They were good together, they were always close spiritually, there was no talk of physical intimacy. Not yet. There wasn't even random touch. But at the same time, they could not help but feel the physiological changes, and with them the growing, albeit restrained, emotional tension and the mental longing that engenders love. Their relationship remained platonic, chaste, thanks to the efforts of a harmful daughter-in-law and a wise mother who limited the communication of children. And although her motives and intentions were logical, understandable and the most benevolent, were they not strewn with them along the famous road? The tragedy of the existential drama is gaining power as it approaches the finale, and therefore viewers should stock up on headscarves in anticipation of a heartbreaking denouement.
Along with the linear, narratively constructed composition of the ode to pure love, undoubted interest is unobtrusive criticism of the mores of Japanese society, with a special emphasis on the disenfranchisement of women. The sense of reality of what is happening is enhanced by the authenticity of everyday sketches: works on rice and cotton fields, family dinner, funerals, weddings. Great attention is paid to detail. The actors walk so deftly in traditional wooden Gat sandals, as if they had not known other shoes since childhood. Umbrellas from the sun of jianome, paper shoji partitions, behind which you can not hide any secrets - all these and many other little things make each frame incredibly beautiful. Perhaps that is why Keisuke Kinoshita unfolds the events taking place in the present to the whole screen, and everything that relates to memories, as if limited to an oval paper passpart, making watching a film resembles flipping through a photo album with old photos. At the same time, some of the frames are similar to classic ink painting on thin rice paper, the benefit of the film is monochrome. In addition to a purely aesthetic purpose, passepartu, or rather vignetting, hides much behind a delineated oval, like human memory, which retains only the most vivid impressions of the past.
This story can be treated as real, but most likely it is a parable. A parable about how, not without help, the first, brightest and perhaps the only real feeling in life dies. The parable about priorities, about the fact that the most expensive for a person can be not material values at all, but the memory of the fields of wild chrysanthemums that give rise to the same emotions as first love, or the letter of a loved one and the dried flower of a bell.