Casting Blossoms to the Sky

After the earthquake and tsunami of 2011 a journalist travels to Nagaoka. Nagaoka is a city that was bombed in the Second World War and holds a large fireworks display every year; the display is held in memory of the dead. The journalist visits a school. The students there are preparing a play that brings the war, the bombing and the present onto the same stage. The narrative keeps moving between the city's past and its present, and time does not run straight. Nobuhiko Obayashi directs. The form is deliberately loose: fiction, documentary footage, staged theatre and speaking straight to camera are used together. The matter it works at is how remembrance is done; the film shows the fireworks as both celebration and rite of mourning. Nagaoka's display is real and holds an important place in the city's history, and the film uses it directly. Obayashi made several more films about war after this one and they are spoken of together. His visual manner is unusual: artificial sets, open collage and transitions that are not realistic. Its limits are length and structure; the narrative runs near three hours and expects the viewer to find their own way. Who it is for: viewers who like Japanese art cinema and formal experiment. Who it is not for: it is long, loose, and asks for historical context.