Japanese Title: トテチータ・チキチータ
Director: Atsushi Kokatsu
Information about the movie in English at Asian Wiki.
I watched this film, A Gentle Rain Falls for Fukushima, on my outbound flight to Taiwan.
Fukushima, a keyword to me these days, immediately caught my attention and triggered my curiosity. Before the play button was pressed, I knew well that it would be about the post-quake nuclear disaster as the production date suggested. There has been a lot going on to protest against the nuclear power plant issue, while no much progress has been made with regard to the problem. Apart from some documentaries that I had watched, it was the first time for me to see a dramatic reflection on the disaster.
The flow of the narrative and the art of narration remind me much of Ishiguro's novels. Much is implied, or suppressed, in a rather undramatic and slow story; sometimes tensions are washed away with comic reliefs.
I was struck by the association that the film builds between the post-disaster traumas of WWII and 311 earthquake, although coincidentally I have also made similar interpretations about other art works I saw last year (Art scope 1; Art scope 2). People who suffer from loss of families and in/voluntary displacement then and now are brought together in a different space and time through a semi-supernatural experience. The ghost story is gently confused into the story to initiate an improbable relationship between several main characters in their previous lives. The spiritual element in the film means not to scare or to teach, as most ghost stories might appear to, but to enable viewers to envision an impossible experience of human connections. It serves to give a broader view about human society as an integrated whole: everyone is related to one another to various degrees in different times and spaces. An anchoring idea to rely on in order to survive, and recover from, a disaster.
When a gentle rain falls for Fukushima, are they the tears for the catastrophe? Or, could it be tear of consolation? Tears for a possibility that human bond remains to keep every lonely being company.
