Still the Water

This movie deserves higher acclaim. I can understand why the director dubs it her masterpiece. The imagery is simply beautiful. The colour and the lighting of the sub-tropical Japanese island is captured perfectly. It makes you want to travel there. The rhythm and the tempo of the movie is slow, which make you wander in the wonderful landscape even longer. This is a poem on pellicule. Of course this is not a blockbuster, it is a totally different ball game, not even in the same ball park. It is like comparing techno music to Beethoven. Both have their charms and peers. Thematically, it is pretty far away from the high technological Japan, although there is a passage in Tokio. The sea and the landscape are definitely protagonists as well. As are the hundred years old trees. It is kind of a spiritual experience this movie. For me it was too short, I wished it lasted longer than two hours. You can rewatch the movie in smaller pieces and reflect them. It talks about all the Freudian core concepts: Eros and Thanatos. Life, death, sex and love, youth and old age, they are intertwined in this movie. It makes it a very visceral though subtle experience. It's soaked in the blue colours of the sky and sea, and the gold of the sun and skin colours. The music is very soulful as well, the chants, the prayers make it a very spiritual experience. Very cathartic film, warm, deep, poetic about letting go and awakening love. I am very curious to see this Japan and its incredible nature, this eastern beauty. It's balm for the soul.

Disregard the bubble gum chewing burgers with attention deficit disorder whining about this movie being "boring". Sure, it is slow paced. But it's a very profound and beautiful allegory about nature and life. If you cannot appreciate the poetry of this film, I'm afraid your soul has been rotted away or you never had one.

This review is not about the film but the crude American taste.

Whenever my cinema-savvy friends criticised Hollywood, I'd jokingly dismiss their arguments, saying I enjoy action-packed, fun films for afternoons and that Hollywood has great production. I stand corrected.

This film has been given a 5 by metacritic. Check out the reviews. They say silent moments are awkward.. or that stares are long... I had an epiphany that Americans and their layman critics have actually no appreciation for an actual good work when they see one. Everybody likes a big Mac but in no way it means you can slam a 5-michelin star cuisine.

I always acknowledged Hollywood films try to appeal to the lowest common denominator. It makes them fun to a point. But I realised today it's not just their audience that is unnaturally confused with junk, but apparently American select critics are actually the lowest common denominator.

P.S. IMDb will not be a universal source until it goes beyond Hollywood standards.

I am a big admirer of Japanese cinema, film makers like Kurusawa, Koreeda, Oshima Imamura and the list goes on. And also from time to time I enjoy slow cinema, but in the case of Naomi Kawase Still The Water and her other previous film "Mourning Forest" for witch reasons i don't understand why the jury awarded it the grand prize there were far better films competing that year like Russia's entry and brilliant The Banishment. Still the water had an interesting concept for a great story and its tropical location and beautiful cinematography, still the screenplay falls flat the characters seem to sleepwalk through the whole film. I truly believe Naomi makes film for her and friends and she is unaware that audiences outside her realm are falling asleep to her films. i give this film a D.

That movie to contemplate the silence of the scenes while we reflect on the events, beautiful, poetic, intense, you have to pay attention to detail, and then I get lost, the charming Kyoko's family, strong scenes like the goat, hunting, bloody, rising sensuality and purity in nudity, simple and painful death, scenes broken by the sea and its surf, cold photography, blue and gray, passionate...