■Title: "Cherry Blossoms"
■Director: Doris Dolly
■Release Date: March 6, 2008 (Germany)
■Reader: Europa
■Recommendation Index: ★★★★☆☆
■One sentence comment : Below Mount Fuji, Tokyo Monogatari. Twenty years later, the Germans once again came to the East, looking for Ozu in the loss of life and lack of family affection.
In 1985, Wenders used a camera to show a "Tokyo painting". This painting was the documentary "Looking for Ozu". The Germans used it to express their memory of the late director Yasujiro Ozu. Speaking of Tokyo in Ozu's movies, the first masterpiece "Tokyo Monogatari", the film tells the disintegration of traditional Japanese families. It’s hard to say how similar "Sakura Bloom" and "Tokyo Story" are. Rudy, the protagonist of the film, is an old man with a routine and regular life. He doesn't like to walk around and prefers to stay in a small town when he is about to retire. His wife Du Li has been around to take care of him. She is obsessed with Japanese culture and wants to visit Mount Fuji with her husband. The beloved youngest son works in Tokyo, and the eldest son and daughter are in Berlin.
The elderly parents set out to find their children living in the big city. The children were entangled in mundane affairs, and said that they were very busy, had no time to accompany their parents and even showed impatient emotions. One of the couple left, leaving his wife facing the remnant life alone. A large part of the plot of "Sakura Bloom" is obviously influenced by "Tokyo Story", although in terms of director's intention and technique, Doris Dolly's video style is "not Ozu". Female directors have inserted many lyrical scenes in their life stories, such as flying flies and mourning crows, flowers and trees, blue sky and sea, and all such things in the painting are the embodiment and transition of the characters' inner emotions. At the end of a lake under Mount Fuji, the indescribable dance of death suddenly reached the culmination of the blending of scenes.
As Japanese commentators have pointed out, the peaceful life in Ozu's movies 20 years ago has long since disappeared. After an intense modernization process, Tokyo has become a world-renowned metropolis. "Sakura Blossoms" uses a lot of space to show the experience of an outsider—the old man Rudy. As far as he can see, there is the night light of skyscrapers and the endless stream of pedestrians on the street. As for the feasting dance scene and bubble bath, old people can't afford it after all. Unlike the perplexity of Bill Murray in "Lost in Tokyo", Rudy's trip to Tokyo is more guided by the heart. Language is not his barrier, at least not a communication barrier that needs to be explained by the title of the film. Tokyo is the highlight of "Sakura Blooming", but it is not the whole movie. Life in a small town, a stay in Berlin, and a trip to the Baltic Sea also take up as much time as it should.
In "Sakura Blossoms", there is the love of husband and wife with each other. As for the scene of the table talk at the end, I am afraid it is not "the son wants to support but does not wait for the kiss", it leaves more helplessness. The gap between the upper and lower generations is not a shallow gap. The emotions of the children are sincere, but their selfishness actually alienated their parents and failed to reach a real reconciliation with each other. The grievances and dissatisfaction of children can be heard in the eyes of the elderly. He wanted to get out of his son's closed small room, just as he left the town to start this journey of searching. Tokyo is very big, so his son made a card for him, which can be hung on his chest, and there is a contact number on it to prevent the elderly from getting lost. The small details seem a bit ironic, because my son is always busy.
The scene of cherry blossoms in full bloom is only a short passage. Rudy, his youngest son and others enjoy the flowers under the tree with wine, food, and the falling wind and flowers briefly express the impermanence of life. There is not much time for the old man to start from the beginning of the film, and there may be ups and downs in the middle, and finally he can return peacefully. It is not his own children who can accept the elderly and listen to his heart. The director arranged for an unknown and homeless Japanese girl to take on the role (the former daughter's LES girlfriend, who is also not relatives). The girl helped him buy a ticket several times to get him on the bus, listened to him how to cook, accompanied him to see Mount Fuji, and got along with each other in tacit understanding.
Compared with the East, Western families disintegrated earlier, which is why "Tokyo Story" is universally welcomed in the world. "Sakura Blossom" repeats this theme, the function of the family entity is degraded, the relationship between the two generations is alienated and the family is indifferent, the film makes the Rudy couple's spiritual home in a foreign country. The film has a lot of ink on Du Li's obsessive dance steps. The white-painted actors are naked, using weird body language on the stage to convey something to the audience. Some viewers think that the dance steps in the film are insulated from the sense of beauty, making them feel ugly and uneasy, which is another matter. Dancing is the vitality of the film. To be precise, it also includes the dances taught to the elderly by the girls themselves, their wives and the girls. Wearing the clothes of the deceased, Rudy continued to dance with his wife in his imagination.
Mount Fuji appeared in different forms in the opening portrait, but was obscured by clouds and mist, not revealing its true face (the opening of the Shochiku company owned by Ozu is also Mount Fuji). When the snow-covered mountain appeared, Mt. Fuji became a presence in the morning light. It no longer relies on other people's channels. Rudy also understands his wife's life. He searched hard and finally got a satisfactory answer under Mount Fuji. [Source: Beijing Youth Daily]
http://www.mtime.com/my/moviel/blog/1539077/
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