first published in Depth Cues Zine
Lately, I’ve been repeatedly reminded of this film from all the rain here in Los Angeles. Maborosi (1995, Dir. Hirozaku Kore-eda) was suggested to me from a dear friend of mine, after talking to them about my grandfather’s recent passing. I wanted to write a film about grief and generational trauma, but told with images of water.
After watching Maborosi, my heart feels heavier but I remain grateful. It was what I long needed to see after my recent visit to my grandmother’s house in Akashi.
In the beginning of the film, Yumiko loses her lover after his unexplained suicide, leaving her to take care of their son in Osaka. Her quiet disposition leaves a hole in the screen that is both lonely and comforting. She moves to a small backwater village called Wajima, marries a new husband, and her life seems to quickly rebuild around her.
I keep thinking about the sea, how you can see the water from the small window of Yumiko’s second home. Windows in films always interested me, as they function as portals for a different frame of mind. Kore-eda has always been heavily influenced by Ozu, who was known to frame shots often with doorways or windows.
One scene in particular stays with me all this time. Yumiko follows a funeral procession, which is left ambiguous as to who it was for. She ends up at the shore next to a bonfire, after sunset. Only her silhouette is seen against the water. Her second husband, Tamio, follows her there. She leaves the smoke rising behind her as she cries, “I just don’t understand.”
I thought back to what my old teacher said: “When one has questions unanswered and unarticulated, those questions over time become part of the person’s identity and they ferment inside the soul, simmering under; later arising into emotions that may be unexplainable.”
After watching this film, I had to face myself. My visit to my grandmother’s came rushing back. Feverish and delirious, I would drift in and out of consciousness, wandering the hallway of her home, stopping at my grandfather’s shrine and kneeling, praying quietly.
Maborosi has many static shots of empty rooms, roads, and train tracks. In my grandmother’s town, it is very much the same. I saw echoes of my mother within the house’s mirrors. I would stare out from my grandfather’s bed, a perspective that perfectly framed my vision with an Ozu-like doorway. These empty spaces were filled with ghosts.
In the bonfire scene, Yumiko and Tamio’s voices are clearly heard over the sounds of the ocean waves. The ocean becomes the backdrop of Yumiko’s questions as they reflect a powerful need to understand, as do we.
As I slept in my grandfather’s bed, my fever transported me under my consciousness. With half-lidded eyes, I stared up at the ceiling and tried to imagine what the afterlife may look like.
In these dreamlike moments, I thought I could hear the ocean; but I was living on farmland.