industrialist's Movie Review of Village of Dreams ( Eno nakano bokuno mura )

Of Youthful Shenanigans
industrialist - wrote on 06/19/11

Higashi's rumination on adolescence is like that lost dream that re-manifests itself one Spring morn. In the wake of moments passed and the idling dogma of the now, the mind coalesces thoughts and memories, fluttering between times of emotional innocence to the abstract wonderments birthed from uncertainties, and in turn somehow granting assurance that existence is not merely pragmatic dilution. To categorize Village of Dreams as mere childhood whimsy, however, would be to deny its subtexts and parabolic awareness. Indeed, to the cinematic neophyte, the communal discourse of the twins and their interstitial enframing of experience and mysterium would appear to be the narrative impetus. The film however is equally about the recursivity of milieu as it is youthful passage, presenting the enframing institutions of their idyllic setting and the duality of its agency - through their interactions with nature, their elders, other children and each other - with sensitive and transcendant ellipsis.

On this note alone, the film is visually resplendent. Shot composition and command of mise-en-scene makes fertile the familiarity of a dream, with the images alone enough to invoke sensory stimulation: the sun is warm, the wind seems close, the rain is sweet, and the days of exploration and discovery in the tranquil surrounds are a feast of colour. However, to appraise its mere formative elements would dismiss its larger structuralist intentions. As adapted from Seizo Tashima's memoirs, Village of Dreams straddles between fond recollections of zeitgest and the shadows of historical context, with the serenity of time and place that functions not simply as cultural transponder but as a world filled with inflectional modalities that allows the events to gestate. These harvested experiences are both products of ennui and the contextual enactment of self. Like all good dreams and memories, the film is rife with sentimentality, nostalgia and absurdity. Such principles, of course, would prove elusive to the mentally deficient reprobate whose perceptions of childhood transition in film include fart jokes, bullying, sex with inanimate objects and steamy showers with teammates after a football game. To the more widely discerning viewer, the film is a candid reflection that, while nominally distant, seems experientially familiar.