Umoregi

I just saw this film at the Starz Denver International Film Festival 2005. It was the most boring film I've seen in a while, and I even like slow paced movies. My wife fell asleep a couple times during the show, as did the friend sitting on the other side of me.

I have a feeling this film would mean a lot more to someone who understood the implications of the Japanese cultural references, like the various traditional festivals and holidays. The credits said this film was based on a book, and I suspect the movie makes more sense if you read the book first.

About 3/4 of the way through this film, I realized it's truly a film about nothing. And I don't mean that in the same way that "Seinfeld" was proud to be a TV show about nothing. This film, referred to by the English language title "Buried Forest", really had no plot I could discern. It just had a vague theme - dreams and stories.

I could imagine worse films and worse ways to spend a couple hours and ten bucks, but not many. So I'm giving this film 3/10.

This film contains a lot of fragment. We can't tell which one is a movie, or which one is a tale. And we don't know anymore where the main story is. I'm very exhausted while I watch it. But when the film came to an end, I was a little bit shock.

I'm not sure that I completely get the message from The Buried Forest. In my opinion, it told us about two sides; the beauty of imagination and the cruelty of real world. Surely, I can't distinguish the fantasy scene from the real life scene. But the face of the leading actress and the music in the final scene put me through the deeply mournfulness. I think the girl finally realize that she has to come back to the real world. Possibly, the buried forest, the whale balloon, the camel are all just illusions.

It makes me think of Haruki Murakami's quote in Sputnik Sweetheart. It said "Someday, the real world will pull us back to our old world."

this movie is not addressing the level of your brain that drives a car and checks your watch while you're watching this film. It's not about some other world either. It's about small town folks who do what they do and make things out of paper and paint and tell stories and walk into the woods, and then ordinarily magical things happen to them, or are done by them, which is the same thing. The French title, translated, is the Forgotten Forest, and it's OK if you feel a little sleepy while you're watching it, since that might help you remember things you've forgotten. It's really quite a beautiful film, and it sees things that take some time to see. It's great in the same way that a slow bow-march on the street is great. It's the film version of a swim protest, except that it doesn't protest at all.

This is the most incomprehensible movie I have ever seen in my life. I've always had trouble fully understanding film festival movies (yes, some are not meant to be understood, and movies that leaves you thinking are more interesting), but NEVER have I been left absolutely clueless by end of a film, among over 300 Japanese movies I have watched. The entire movie is made of many bits of random events that had zero coherence. In fact, if not for the title "Umoregi" (Buried-Tree), I wouldn't even have known which one was the main storyline.

I am fluent in Japanese, but the understanding of the language and its culture did not help me one bit in trying to figure out what this director/writer was trying to say. Perhaps I needed some magic mushrooms for this magical trip into the dream.

I was deeply disappointed to see many positive reviews from film critics for this movie. I personally think it's wrong to praise a film just because the director is famous and you're too afraid to admit you didn't understand the movie.

I have seen this movie a couple days ago on the Era New Horizons movie festival in Cieszyn, Poland and I must admit that I really liked it. Normally I don't like movies with no true storyline but this is a fine exception. The movie has some plot but it really is ( for me ) a series of loosely linked images. Beautiful and magic images.

The movie itself itself is centered around three young girls living in a small village in Japan. The girls like books and at one point they start inventing their own stories. As time passes we get to know many characters and their stories and at some point we are not sure what is 'true' and what is 'magic'.

Yety the most important part is the imagery. The little town, the buried forest ( which is, by the way, the title ), the little boat on the stream. Watching this movie is pure pleasure. Just sit back relax and enjoy this mellow magic trip.