When an older man puts on his wife’s vest, her pearl necklace and her skirt under his jacket; just to show her Tokyo after she died – it’s poetry. When a man ties his handkerchief to a pole to keep him from getting lost – it’s poetry. Kirschblüten Hanami is packed with little stories, that sometimes stretch just one scene. And I am a sucker for poetic imagery.
This is the Story: Trudi finds out her husband won’t live very long. She decides not to tell him, but instead take him to his children in Berlin and do the things they never did, but really should have done (it turns out Trudi has more things she should have done). Trudi dies. Rudi is left heartbroken and unable to ‘find’ his wife. He leaves for Tokyo to show his departed wife mount Fuji, but more, to find her.
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It’s not easy, ‘happiness’. Sometimes it feels like almost drowning, having your head smashed by wave upon wave, feeling the dark currents underneath trying to pull you down. It’s not the struggle, but the realisation that despite everything, you are still in the water. Happy-go-lucky hands you life and the bliss of living it in all the struggle, madness and sadness.
He just, he just stands there. His hands close to his legs. His head slightly tilted. He just stands there. The woman he loves leaves back to her home country, Syria. She follows her son who is deported. And he stands. The airport is just a place painted in grey, as is the sky, and the sound. Everything except his faint attempt of a smile somewhere deep inside there. He just stands.
I will show many pictures. Film is just a way to tell a story. It has its own way to build a tale, it has its own language. And, just as in theatre, it needs characters doing stuff to keep the story going (in contrast to for instance a novel, that can take place entirely in a person’s mind)*. The characters must be shown (duh). But how they are shown is a voice in the tale. And in Angel A it’s a dominant voice.
It is not over. It is never over. Half Nelson urges its viewers to remain opinionated, to keep analysing the society you live in. To keep challenging the ethics and morals that submerge silently in any society. Or. In other words. To keep struggling.
So. Remember when you were young, that when you walked out of a movie you felt you were the main character? You walked back out into the night and just felt like flying off, after seeing Superman? Or running back home to check if You Got Mail? Remember?
Lars and the Real Girl jumped into my lap like a kitten. She put her nails onto my shirt, right on the muscles that case my heart and started pulling and tickling. Every now and then she purred. Every now and then she hissed. When I paid no attention she caught a bird and presented it, rubbing her face to my ankles.