Chiyo

Lately, I had been watching a lot of Short feature movies. I find  these movies engrossing and thought-provoking.  No mega stars, CGI's or fancy props but it leaves an imprint on my mind that I can recall an entire movie even if I saw it months ago. 

Last night I saw the brilliant work of Masanori  Babu, writer, producer and director of Chiyo. It's about the story of Chiyo (played by Miyu Tanaka) her quest to see her father (Hiromasa Takagi) , a soldier who went to war in 1944.  A year later on the night of the Obon, a Buddhist tradition wherein the dead  visit their relative, Chiyo searches  for his father. 

During the course of her search she met various spirits but not her father. When she finally found him, he can not see her. He told her,the hell he saw in the arena of war  blinded him.  He was implying that there was  a limit to man's ability to endure extreme cruelty and not seeing what you were seeing was the only way to survive (his spirit not his physical being in this case). I had noticed that there are more movies made on the subject of the  Japanese version of the War, maybe because the American side had been exhausted by Hollywood. 

The Director of Photography, Yasu Tanida did a wonderful job.  I wanted to freeze some of the scenes and put it in canvas and hang it in my wall.  It's definitely better than my last  movie fixation on Russel on  the animation   movie UP.

Miyu (Chiyo), I fell in love with her.  Wearing a printed kimono with red obi, walking in the gravel, bridges and forest in her matching red clogs, plaintively asking  " I have no idea what to do and where to go anymore... Where are you Daddy?" is heart wrenching  not akin to Niagara fall of tears but in a subtle way. It compels me to think that  Utopia is not a bad idea  after all; sublimally hoping to save children from the brutalities of  armed conflict.

This little movie humanizes the ordinary Japanese soldier that had been regulary  demonized. I am not defending them, they conducted the war in horrible fashion but  sometimes we forget that they were like us, with families that were hurt like the way we hurt... just like Chiyo, innocently asking questions that are so agonizingly hard to give an answer to.

I told my husband if given a second chance to live my life again , I would choose being Japanese. He asked me why, I said because of  Mothra, Ninjas, Godzilla, their dainty little food, exquisite gardens and of course Hello Kitty. But I dont want to be O-kyaku (bow legged) so I am rethinking this notion.  Still, this shorts will be my favorite next to UP.