Review of LETTERS FROM THE MOUNTAIN (Amidado Dayori) 2002

Score: 8/10

This film appears to have a message, and director Takashi Koizumi tries very hard to show rather than tell it. The cast ranges in age from schoolchildren to nono-generians and Koizumi has herded them into the mountains near Nagano, taking care to film across four seasons. What slowly unfurls like a fiddlehead in June is a sweeping story of a community that helps each other through tragedies and losses. We see through the eyes of Takao (Terao Akira) recently relocated from the big city to his childhood village with his “big city doctor” wife, Michiko (Higuchi Kanako). We get to know the couple by watching how they get to know the locals, and the most salient facts of their story are not revealed to us until the third act.

The main cast of seven includes the excellent Terao and Higuchi, their ninety something neighbor (Tanie Kitabayashi), the young mute woman who writes the local paper (Konishi Manami), plus Takao’s old schoolteacher and his wife (Tamura Takahiro and Kagawa Kyoko). Also featured is Yoshioka Hidetaka as a doctor, the actor no stranger to medical roles. All are portrayed in compelling performances, mostly by veterans and icons of Japanese cinema and television. The film is chock full of beautiful vistas, lush gardens, and pithy wisdom of the rustic variety. At every point the story contrasts youth and age, experience and innocence, mentors and apprentices.

Through much of the film, very little seems to happen. Eventually events surge forward. These plot developments should not come as a surprise because the seeds were planted early, yet surprise they will because we the audience will have already planted our feet on a silent mountainside. Halfway in, anything too dramatic will disturb this meditation. Nevertheless, Koizumi juggles his storytelling responsibilities without losing integrity. Despite the excellent cast, this is really a director’s film. Some will take it as a slice of (rural) life, others will take away something more profound.

REEL JAPAN

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