Jeanskynebu the audience applauded

Mandeep Tyson The acting in this movie is really good.

Guillelmina The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

Logan By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

CountZero313 Machiko starts work as a caregiver in a rural Old Folk's Home, seemingly setting out on a new life after the traumatic loss of her child. There she meets Shigeki, who seems to take to her because her name is similar to that of his beloved wife who passed away 33 years previously. Thirty-three years is an auspicious time, says a Buddhist priest to Shigeki, because his wife can now enter nirvana. The priest's words, the arrival of Machiko, and another birthday seem to spark something inside the mentally diminished Shigeki. When Machiko takes him out for the day, a car accident sets off a chain of events that will push both Shigeki and Mahciko to extremes, and respective epiphanies.That is as much conventional narrative interpretation as this episodic, dreamlike piece can sustain. The set up is deftly handled, with the protagonists' tragedy revealed in violent confrontation with Machiko's husband, and opaque but insistent resistance from Shigeki. Makiko Watanabe exemplifies the low-key, naturalistic performances from the actors, seemingly in balance with the amateur octogenarians around them. A game of hide-and-seek in tea fields is endearing.However, the best and worst of art-house is on display here. The mountains, forests and streams of Nara look magical and immortal. The sense of timelessness set in contrast to the fading mortality of the care-home residents is profound. However, once the story moves towards Machiko and Shigeki's journey through the forest, the shots are held longer, the lines become sparse and difficult to fathom, and there is a lot of walking, walking, walking... I get that these two are on a journey that will help them realise, for Shigeki, that his life has had meaning, and that for Machiko, there is a way to go on through human connection. Somehow this is brought to them by hugging a large dead tree. And falling in streams. And digging. And walking, lots of walking.It looks beautiful, the actors are charismatic, but I am not sure there is really anything else there. Once Upon a Time in Anatolia dealt with similar themes, but more poetically, with more startling, painterly images, and with a deeper resonance. The Mourning Forest opens with a promise, but ultimately it does not live up to it.

DICK STEEL Winning the Grand Prix of the Cannes Film Festival last year, I actually found it a tad difficult to appreciate this piece by Naomi Kawase, as compared to Shara. I am beginning to suspect that I have a profound disengagement with movies that deal with grief and loss, especially when it takes on a very detached approach in some ways with the characters constantly unable to deal with those emotions for the most parts.The movie opened true to Kawase's penchant for capturing moving air. Here, we see lush greenery on tree tops dancing to the motion of wind, and vast open fields where blades of grass sway back and forth when caressed by the breeze. It's like watching a National Geographic episode of forests and greenery before the opening credits kicked in to start the film proper. I even suspected that M Night Shyamalan could have paid homage in his The Happening, which also had plenty of such shots put into it.The story tells of the relationship that formed between Shigeki (Shigeki Uda) and Machiko (Machiko Ono), the former an old man in an elderly home who has been aloof after the lost of his wife some 33 years ago. 33 years is an extremely long time, and to miss someone for that long, well, you know how strong his emotions are to his wife. On the other hand, Machiko is a staff at the same elderly home, but she too is grieving internally for the loss of her son, and her husband squarely puts the responsibility and blame on her petite shoulders.While initially starting off on the wrong foot with fiery misunderstanding, they soon hit it off in a game of tag in the great outdoors, where the camera pulls back to reveal again the large open spaces, and the two protagonists finding and connecting with each other, two tiny creatures in the space that Nature offered, only to act as a precursor of a more adventurous outing that would come soon after, in an excursion that took a turn for the unexpected when their car ran into a ditch.In what seemed to be a wandering around aimlessly on foot deep inside nature herself, both Shigeki and Machiko had to depend on each other to keep to their wildlife tour, with the former having the objective of wanting to look for his late wife's grave, like a pilgrimage in itself. The observations from far earlier gives way to a more intimate look at the two, and Shigeki turned into some kind of enigma, clutching his all important haversack, as they go from set piece to set piece, some quaintly quiet, while others I seem to make no headway from sudden outbursts which persisted as being more whiny than anything else.Might be a masterpiece for some to appreciate, especially with its beautiful cinematography, but everything else was certainly lost on me probably due to my lack of extreme patience, and I grief in not being able to be moved by this movie.

8thSin This movie won the Grand Prize in Cannes Film Festival. I didn't get it, as usual."Discovering your true identity through a journey" is in fact my favorite theme for movies, and this film at first seemed very promising with interesting characters and beautiful sceneries of the forest. However, as the movie progressed, I became more and more confused. I'm sure this is one of those movies that's supposed to make you think, but way too little information was given even for audience to use their imagination.I actually went back to read the plot synopsis after I finished watching the film (all confused), and realized for the first time the nurse had previously lost her child. There was a scene where an unknown man saying it's all your fault. Now that I think of it, he is probably her ex-husband blaming her for the dead child. No matter how you think about it, any movie that requires the audience to read plot synopsis to understand the plot is unacceptable as a film. There were many other things in this film that was just outright puzzling, but the movie ended without even attempting to explain any of it. I absolutely did not connect with any of the characters. While this film had an extremely beautiful cinematography, that alone is not enough to make it a great film as a whole. The screen also shook far too much. I understand this director used to be a documentary filmmaker, but that is totally unnecessary for a feature-length film.I actually really liked the female lead actress Ono Machiko, but the male lead had too much age difference that I just couldn't see them as a couple. That "campfire" scene was completely incomprehensible for me.It's very well-known that Japanese films that win prizes in Cannes rarely fit the typical Japanese tastes. I guess movies, especially at film festivals are considered to be art, so perhaps truly amazing works are not meant to be understood by an average viewer like me. Or maybe Western audiences simply see the Japanese as a mysterious group of people, and liked the mysterious couple in this film behaving erratically in the enigmatic forest.This film, like many other Japanese Cannes prize-winners, had disastrous user review ratings in Japanese movie sites. I really need to start heeding their advice and not expect too much from these movies.

film_riot It's all about grief here and finding back to joy in your life. Our main characters Machiko and Shigeki share something: They both lost someone they loved. "Am I still alive?" is one of the questions Shigeki asks at the beginning. Their relationship, or better, their friendship is going to give the answer to Shigeki's question. The Japanese director Kawese Naomi repeatedly uses long shots of trees or rice fields moved by wind. Maybe this observation of the nature should remind the viewer that this is how life is. Everybody will lose somebody in a lifetime, but nature carries on and so do we. Kawese doesn't use a plot as a drive for his movie, he uses a mixed atmosphere between sadness and joy, between loving and hating. Very important in "Mogari no mori" is also the sound track, that is dominated by sounds directly from nature. I had an exhausting day when watching the film, and it was hard for me to get lost in these pictures. I am interested how it works on a second viewing.