A scene at the Sea - An innocent poetic love story!






Thanks all, for your encouragements.

Hopefully, some of you (at least) enjoyed the movie cell 211.

This week’s movie is completely a different one.

In my opinion, movie taste (not only) differs from person to person (fortunately!). It probably depends on his or her personal life experiences, maturity, literacy and personality. So, intentionally I chose a contrasting genre for this week.

This film has no villains. No action sequences. No suspense. No turns and twists. No intelligent script….still thoroughly enjoyable. Like a poem, slow and leisurely portrayed story. Poems with even fewer lines have a longer impact. The film does exactly the same.
 I had watched this movie many times, and went through that pleasant experience once again for this review.

I need to thank Mr.Myskin-a tamil film maker- for introducing Takeshi Kitano (though not directly- accidentally) to me. Kitano is a versatileJapanese film maker (very interesting personality-will write about him separately). Myskin copied (frame by frame) one of kitano’s movies- Kikujiro, and made Nandalala (his version- inspired!).In recent times, this is the trend in kollywood. They moved away from Hollywood to Japan,Korea and China, searching for interesting stories to photocopy (naama andha padamellam pakka mattamenra dhairiyam!). When I watched the original Kikujiro, I realized how bad the duplication was.

Impressed with Kitano’s style of film making, I had gone crazy and watched many of his movies. His signature styles are, long shots with stillness, grim faced actors, subtle expressions (or expressionless), long silence and sparse but soulful music. You would observe his unique style in every movie he made/makes, irrespective of the genre. In fact most of his movies are gangster or cop movies. But to everyone’s surprise, out of the blue, he came up with a tender love story- A scene at the Sea. It won many awards….

Story…Shigeru, a deaf and mute garbage collector, lives in a small beautiful beach town of Japan. He leads a lonely boring life (even though he has a cute innocent deaf and mute girlfriend) until he sees a broken surf board in a dust bin, in one fine summer day.Hesitantly he picks it up, repairs and starts learning. He goes to beach with his girlfriend every day and practices, in spite of initial mocking from other surfers. Few days later blue bunny (surf board) breaks down and with great difficulty, after cumulating two months’ salary he buys a new surf board. At one point he become obsessed with surfing. By seeing his persisting effort, one ex-champ helps him and encourages him to participate in surfing competitions. He misses out the first one, because he does not hear the announcement. Initially he feels disappointed. But with determination in the next competition he does well and goes to the final round and gets a memento as a recognition for his achievement. Both of them feel extremely happy and proud.
One rainy day, during routine training session shigeru drowns and dies.

For everyone else life returns to normal without shigeru except his girlfriend, for whom the life will never be the same again...

Reasons why I am mad about this movie are… (0.I am mad!)



1. Kitano…Kitano…Kitano…his style of film making is very different, and close to my heart. Movie making is a visual medium, he utilizes his style well to convey the story. Like, reading between lines expresses many things in a poetry, he utilizes silence and stillness in his films.
                                    
Imagine, if this story was made by one of our directors, how he or she would have (over) dramatized the film, and traumatized us!
Even though this is a story about two physically challenged individuals, they too have love, joy, determination, struggle and sadness like any other ordinary human.

2. The way his girlfriend expresses her love by doing small things is really poetic.
She follows him every day (with some distance) obediently for surfing practice….
Folds his clothes carefully with lots of love and sits on the beach…
Enjoys mockingly with innocent smile on her face when he struggles to surf initially…
Gets angry when she sees him with another girl…
Feels proud when he performs well in the competition...
In the end after his death, gives him final adieu with a sad smile…

3. Music plays an important role. And as I said silence was used effectively. Music perfectly reflects the emotions. Actually in many places it helps to tell the story!

4. Humor. Throughout the film lighter moments are blended naturally.

5. Innocent, simple and honest story.

Caution: I believe, this movie is not for everyone. Many may feel boring. Even if you plan to watch, please don’t start with high expectations.

 Next week, a family drama – A separation

09-08-14,
5pm.








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