A hundred flowers - Hyakka Directed by Genki Kawamura
A hundred flowers - Hyakka
Directed by Genki Kawamura
Starrings: Mieko Harada, Yuka Itaya, Misuzu Kanno, Yumi Kawai, Yukiya Kitamura, Masami Nagasawa, Masatoshi Nagase, Keishi Nagatsuka, Amane Okayama, Masaki Suda
Country: Giappone
Year 2022
Author Review: Roberto Matteucci
Click Here for Italian Version
“Get me a flower!”
Dialogue with an Alzheimer's patient is possible and inevitable. It is essential to be aware of succeeding. There is a need to understand the messages of the sick people and learn a language that they can comprehend. The words of a dementia sufferer who seems incomprehensible still have communicative value. To decipher messages, it is necessary to interpret non-verbal terms and gestures. Only through conversation, it is possible to avoid isolation and loneliness.
It is not easy; it is very problematic. Caring for Alzheimer's patients requires perseverance, work, and patience.
This connective principle applies to both formal and informal caregivers, such as family members.
It is the same lexical difficulty that exists between Izumi and her mother (Yuriko), who suffers from dementia. She wants to see the “half-fireworks”. Izumi does not understand; what could be “half-fireworks”?
Izumi and Yuriko are the protagonists of the moving film A Hundred Flowers – Hyakka by director Genki Kawamura, screened at the Bangkok World Film Festival 2022.
It is New Year's Eve. On the table are a dead flower and fallen petals. The house belonging to a past world, a woman, Yuriko, plays the piano. Yuriko replaces the flower, which will fade again. His son, Izumi, arrives and he looks around. Compared to the initial sequence, it is possible to realize the real condition of the flat. Inside, there is a mess, it is a pigsty. Dirt, food everywhere, complete chaos. Yuriko is losing her memory and lucidity. Her life, in her head, is dissolving. Izumi accompanies her to a lovely nursing home, where kind nurses lovingly assist her. Her reason has totally vanished, and yet Yuriko is playing the piano divinely for the other patients in the clinic. Everything has disappeared from her mind, but she remembers music very well.
The director is influenced by a personal event, his grandmother suffering from Alzheimer's:
“My grandma got Alzheimer’s and when I went to see her for the first time in a while, she asked me ‘Who are you?’ It’s a question you might get from a toddler, but not an adult. While feeling sad I also was fascinated by what was going on inside her head.” (1)
The first reaction, in front of a friend or relative who has Alzheimer's, is to recall the past. Who remembers the particulars best?
“I started visiting her every week and would talk about her memories from the past. Talking about when she first took me fishing to the sea, where I caught a big fish, she told me it wasn’t the sea but at a lake. I figured she was going senile but when I returned home and looked in a photo album, it was at a lake. I realized my own memories were false, alongside my grandma’s Alzheimer’s; that’s a compelling phenomenon. At the end, my grandma remembered a lot of episodes that were important to her: they bloomed like a hundred flowers. That’s why I gave the novel that name. Humans are made of their memories rather than their physical bodies.” (1)
The remembrance of a healthy person is confused, mixed with a multitude of thoughts, hidden in the depths of the psyche. On the contrary, the mind of a patient is clear about past events. The mental superstructure has dispelled, inducing one to recall details.
Genki Kawamura uses this concept in the film. There are many flashbacks, parallel stories, humans, and questionable past episodes. Just as Yuriko does not forget the half-fireworks, Izumi does not forget having been abandoned, continuing to have a grudge.
Izumi is cold with his mother. When he was ten, Yuriko left him to chase her lover. His father had died, so Izumi was entrusted to his grandmother. His mother left him without any explanation. She simply vanished, leaving him alone in an amusement park.
The shock is painful for Izumi. He is waiting for a child too, although the abandonment still traumatizes him. He has not elaborated on his resentment towards his mother, even questioning his future paternal abilities: “What kind of parent will I be?”
Izumi is angry and tormented. These peculiarities make him suspicious, disillusioned, irritable, shy, melancholic. In the end, he will demonstrate love and forgiveness. His Oedipus complex will be removed.
Yuriko was a piano teacher. She loves music. She is a woman capable of love, but also makes a big mistake. She is a mother who has committed an unforgivable sin. Abandoning her young child to live with her partner is an unjustifiable moral crime. It is also a demonstration of free rebellion, which destroys the sense of duty, the sense of guilt for facing one's sexuality. She does not try to justify herself, forgetting her misdeeds. It will be the earthquake that restores the right status quo. She comes back to her son. She is not weak. She follows her lover enthusiastically.
Between Izumi and her boyfriend, Yuriko chooses her man. An irregular choice? Perhaps, but definitely not hypocritical.
The film has a complicated structure. Multiple temporal and spatial flashbacks add excitement to the plot without weighing it down.
Characters are presented from different perspectives. Yuriko's many aspects are seen, both those less noble, like her escape, and those that are more natural, like her obstructed love.
The conflict between the mother and her son was intense, both when Izumi was a child and when he became a parent himself.
The most interesting part is the discovery of the reasons behind her mother's departure. It happens when Izumi reads Yuriko's diaries while she is in hospital. There is unconfessed love, adversity, the tragedy of the earthquake and the return home.
The solution is fireworks. For Izumi, they are normal, while for her mother, they are "half-fireworks". When the son guesses the meaning, his brain and heart open and he can observe "half-fireworks" too. He finally realizes his mother's love, her wickedness, but who does not have flaws? He takes her home, urged by his wife that she has just had a baby.
The rhythm is constant. The plot twists and turns are acceptable and underlined with style by the director.
Yuriko is continually the main target. The author is always close to her with a camera. Or, he films her completely in focus while the background is blurred. This expression represents mental discontinuity, darkness in her mind. Or, the sequence of compulsively buying eggs in the supermarket. Everything is a circle.
An allegory of Alzheimer's is the theft of photo albums and souvenirs, the testimony of a previous existence. Why should thieves steal an individual's past? Is the thief deceitful, or is the disease itself stealing a life?
Yuriko's aloneness is in the frame after the earthquake. She fled. On the streets, there is only destruction, rubble, and there is no one. There is no crying and screaming. There is only her pain. The pain of leaving her kid alone, and the pain of comprehending her choices.
The direction is an example of refinement. The author prefers a brilliant atmosphere and yellow and blue chromaticism for identification purposes. He said in an interview:
“For example, I used colors in a way not usually seen in Japanese film, the female lead only wears yellow, whereas her son wears complementary colors like blue and purple. This portrayed them as a mother-son unit.”
[...]
When I realized that people from overseas couldn’t distinguish Japanese people’s faces, I thought, oh, then this time I’ll use colors to identify the actors. I also employed colors to help mark places in time because the narrative jumps back and forth …” (1)
These artistic solutions are devoid of moralism. Mother's reckless behaviour is not judged; rather, it is logically and intimately explained.
Gavin Blair, “Tokyo: Producer Genki Kawamura Talks Directorial Debut, ‘Your Name’ Hollywood Remake”, 28 October 2022, https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-features/genki-kawamura-interview-your-name-hollywood-remake-1235250698/
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