The Mourning Forest (Mogari No Mori)

Naomi Kawase’s powerfully beautiful The Mourning Forest mixes a modern sensibility with animistic beliefs to create a whispered elegy to love and its ability to persist long after death.

Old Shigeki (Shigeki Uda), suffering from senile dementia, lives in a small retirement home filled with light and tranquility that sits on the edge of a mighty forest. He holds on to a special relationship with his dead wife, Mako (Kanako Masuda), his long letters to her the silent testimony of his undying love. But now the thirty-third anniversary of Mako’s death is approaching and, according to Japanese Buddhist beliefs, this means the departed must travel to the land of Buddha. The time has come for the couple to part forever.

Kawase’s naturalistic touch creates an inner geography of emotion, gracefully linking it to the region’s awe inspiring topography in a way that recalls Japan’s long tradition of landscape painting. The Mourning Forest spotlights Kawase’s harmonious style of filmmaking, giving us a modern reflection on aging that also lyrically exalts nature’s primeval majesty.

Giovanni Fulvi, Toronto Film Festival Programme

*Winner of Grand Prize, Cannes Film Festival 2007