GREETINGS FROM FUKUSHIMA (Grüsse aus Fukushima)
B+
aka: Fukushima, Mon
Amour
Germany (106 mi) 2016
‘Scope d: Doris Dörrie Official
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I often fall into a
state of panic when I think about the direction my life is taking.
Am I spending my life
with the right person?
Do I have the right
job? Do I look right?
Do I earn enough
money?
Am I making enough of
my life? Am I happy? Should I live differently?
And so on and so on.
A permanent flood of
questions crashing over me and filling me with anxiety.
I can‘t help but worry
all the time.
What if? What if I lost everything I care for?
How far might I fall?
How do I start over?
—Marie (Rosalie Thomass)
In the manner of Rossellini’s GERMANY, YEAR ZERO (1948), a
neorealist film shot in the bombed out ruins of Berlin after the war, revealing
the utter destruction, causing such a public outrage after the initial
screening that it was not shown again in Germany for another 25 years, and
Kiarostami’s AND LIFE GOES ON…(1992), another superb film shot in the rubble of
the 1990 Koker earthquake in northern Iran that killed some 50,000 people, a
wrenching drama that shows the resiliency of people who have lost everything,
German director Dörrie brought a small camera crew revealing similar
devastation affecting the Fukushima district in Japan. On March 11, 2011, a powerful earthquake off
the eastern Japanese coast lasting 150 seconds created a tsunami with 15 meter
tidal waves causing interior flooding that destroyed 260 coastal settlements,
killing more than 19,000 people. Among
the affected areas hit was the nuclear power station of Fukushima Daiichi,
where three of the six reactors experienced a core meltdown, the worst nuclear
disaster since Chernobyl in 1986, unleashing 750 tons of radioactive water
contaminating 30,000 square kilometers of land as well as 110,000 tons of
water, where 170,000 people in the region (residents living within a 20 km
radius of the plant) had to be evacuated while more than two million are
subject to regular radiation testing.
Even now, five years later, more than 80,000 people still live in
emergency shelters, while a rise of lymphatic illnesses among children and
leukemia in adults has been attributed to people in the region, where
conservative estimates are that it will take another forty years before the
power station can be totally secured, creating substantial trauma for a nation
that already had to endure the horrific effects of the Hiroshima (90,000 to
150,000 deaths) and Nagasaki (40,000 to 80,000) nuclear bombings that ended
WWII. Japan is the only nation to have ever
been targeted with nuclear bombs, making this a unique part of their
culture. It’s interesting that Germany
and Japan share WWII tragedies, both with difficult memories of the past, where
having to overcome self-induced trauma and admit to mistakes is painfully
difficult, both destroyed nations that had to be rebuilt at considerable
international expense, each becoming superpowers of capitalism, infatuated with
American culture, where in the wake of the disaster, Germany shut down their
nuclear power plants, as German Prime Minister Angela Merkel is a physicist
well aware of the potential hazards, where the underlying spirit of the film is
a meditative rumination of empathy.
Dörrie has a fascination with Japan, having traveled there
as many as 25 times, where this is her fourth film made there, including her
Ozu tribute, CHERRY BLOSSOMS (2008), arguably the best one, shot during the
full bloom of the Tokyo Cherry Blossom Festival. While this film has an alternate title,
FUKUSHIMA, MON AMOUR, an obvious allusion to the Alain Resnais film HIROSHIMA
MON AMOUR (1959), though there is no budding romance at the center of the film,
but both deal with the trauma of a nuclear catastrophe while using a unique
approach of weaving memories and archival footage with contemporary events to
create an altogether different contextualization, where illusory ghosts haunt
the living, leaving a profound impression of regret and personal torment. While the Resnais film uses a French woman on
a “peace and reconciliation” mission to Hiroshima to remember the devastation
caused by the atomic bomb, this film sends a young German woman, Marie (Rosalie
Thomass), on a similar mission, joining the organization Clowns4Help with
Clowns Without Borders co-founder Moshe Cohen to cheer up the survivors of the
Fukushima disaster. The arrival scene in
Japan is reminiscent of Chris Marker’s Sans
Soleil (1982), particularly the hand-held cinéma vérité techniques witnessing
the crowds intermingling with the public festivities at Shinjuku Square and the
overflowing traffic from Shibuya Station, one of Tokyo’s busiest railway
stations, where Marie, dressed in a clown’s outfit, encounters someone wearing
a giant cat head that is so utterly surreal she has to acknowledge its presence
and pay tribute. But before any of this
happens, there is an opening soliloquy with Marie asking questions of herself,
caught in an existential moment of reevaluation, wondering how she could start
over again? Distracting herself after
the embarrassment of having to flee from her own wedding, Marie is not in the
best psychological state, having little confidence in herself, where she often
breaks down into moments of personal anger and disgust with herself. Making matters worse, she’s an amateurish
clown that doesn’t make people laugh, unable to make any connection with them,
which only further exacerbates her own self-doubts. So what we do have is a fairly troubled young
woman who wants to help make a difference, where clearly she’s traveled great
distance to do so, which is to her credit, but awkwardly keeps stepping on her
own feet, which only demoralizes her even more.
Packing up her bags, she decides to give up and leave, yet she’s faced
with the devastating realization that these elderly residents (as all the young
people already left the region), predominantly women, have few options, living
in “Temporary Housing Communities” consisting of hastily built Porta cabin
shelters, as they have nowhere else to go.
Perhaps more importantly, no one is providing care for the residents
there, instead they are dominated by boredom and stagnation, living out the rest
of their lives as undesirables exiled to an all but uninhabitable 12.5 mile
Exclusion Zone.
As we enter the zone, the stark Black and White images shot
by cinematographer Hanno Lentz of the barren and flattened landscape are
striking, removed of all vegetation or any signs of life, with the large
presence of the evacuated Fukushima power station looming nearby, with
uniformed security personnel manning guard stations, where it really appears
that they are literally at the end of the world. Perhaps the most haunting image is seeing
more than 9 million bags of contaminated dirt meticulously stacked on top of
one another on the land of former farms of Fukushima, millions of bags that
nobody wants, creating an immense, geometrically precise Zen garden of toxic
waste. Brief archival images of the
tsunami’s raging floods are seen washing away buildings, houses, and cars,
followed by excavating crews of workmen wearing masks and carrying Geiger
counters, common behavior for all the residents living nearby in Government
approved safety zones, leaving a bleak picture of utter devastation and
loss. From this community, a stubborn
old woman, Satomi (Kaori Momoi) asserts herself, coercing Marie to drive her to
her former home, which is still standing, but in shambles, perhaps the only
structure that survived, along with a barren tree, where she brings with her
jugs of water and all her belongings in plastic bags, refusing to budge now
that she’s finally “home.” Marie decides
to join her, helping her clean up the mess, discovering photographs underneath
the dust, and connections to her former life, where she calls herself the last
of the Geisha, having mastered the art, where she was teaching a former student
Yuki at the time of the floods, surviving by hanging onto that battered
tree. While the two women clean, then
sit and sip tea together, signs of a relationship develop, though reluctantly,
as Satomi finds the blond Marie overly loud and clumsy, yet they seem connected
by their human imperfections, carrying a lot of emotional baggage that is
largely left unspoken, as neither one talks easily about the path that brought
them there, as both are scarred by painful pasts. It is in these wordless exchanges that Dörrie
excels, full of empty spaces and changing moods, as each is curious in their
own way, trying to be helpful, but bogged down by ghosts of the past that visit
them at night, illuminated figures in the surrounding blackness, but partially
blurred, shattered memories struggling to come into view, accompanied by eerie
piano music by Ulrike Haage, GRÜSSE AUS FUKUSHIMA,
Soundtrack Ulrike Haage (excerpts ... YouTube (21.21).
Satomi:
When I got home there was nothing
left.
What would you do if that happened
to you?
Bodies lying around?
Clothes and books, photographs and
furniture.
If there was nothing left anymore?
If your world had completely ceased
to exist?
If you had lost everything?
What would you do then?
A film about friendship, grief, and forgiveness, the
performance by Kaori Momoi as Satomi is among the best of the year, revealing
surprising depth, particularly as the film progresses, uncovering layers of
hidden attributes that come into view, yet with little fanfare, remaining subtle
and understated. Satomi, more
introverted, familiar with the world of spirits, is hardly the repressed
Japanese stereotype of a refined woman, instead she is harshly critical of her
German friend, referring to her as an “elephant,” instead of elegant, as she’s
incapable of the dainty Japanese etiquette of a Geisha, often referring to her
condescendingly, where the essence of her humanity is her complete lack of
tact. Thomass as Marie is a beautiful
presence, always photographing well in close-up, but nearly amateurish by
comparison, where her awkwardness is a true reflection of who she is, which
allows viewers to focus all their attention on Satomi, who does not disappoint,
as she is the heart and soul of the picture, as much of the later stages of the
film are seen through her eyes. Marie
has her moments, perhaps the biggest is a nighttime dancing scene set to car
headlights, where Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground sing “Here She Comes
Now,” The Velvet
Underground Here she comes now - YouTube (2:05), an homage to Terrence
Malick in BADLANDS (1973), where a car radio plays Nat King Cole’s “A Blossom
Fell” in a pitch black night, Badlands - A Blossom Fell -
YouTube (3:00). The language barrier
is an additional wall of separation, as Marie is simply removed and left out
from overall Japanese conversation, yet this is typical of foreigners in a
foreign land, as understanding does not easily reveal itself, but must be
sought after with persistence. Tainted
souls struggling to survive in a contaminated land, Dörrie finds poetic means
of expression, utilizing smaller moments to magnify larger themes, where the
everyday give and take adds an element of healing and repair, eventually
gaining confidence until their spirits grow indefatigable. Satomi decides they need a “Radiation
vacation,” hopping on a miraculously repaired moped to visit the bright lights
of the big city, discovering a revitalized new energy, and a secret surprise,
as Satomi reconnects with her daughter in yet another strange and puzzling
relationship, with Dörrie continuing to communicate in an unorthodox style,
where dealing with the trauma of the past is a neverending struggle that can
feel overwhelming, consuming all your energy, yet humans have the capacity to
survive. Dörrie has written and directed
more than 30 films during her career, also written novels and children's books,
while also staging operas, revealing a wide artistic range, where her earlier
films dealt with a disconnection between men and women, probing the problems in
existing relationships, creating eccentric but loveable characters, while her
later films remain offbeat, but seem to recognize the value of personal
intimacy, creating small, poignant moments that have the capacity to become
universally transcendent, poetically filling the empty spaces that separate us
all.
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