Fountainhead

The film opens with a dispute over water. Poor farmers stand against a company. The company has bought up the land in the district. On what it bought it is building villas for city people. That construction threatens the water the villagers rely on. Ikushima works as a botanist. He is trying to find another source of water for the area. Around the same time he meets a woman named Motoko. Motoko is secretary to the man who bought the land. Something grows between the two of them. In time the story moves away from the water dispute. What comes to the centre is the relationship between these two. The distance and the hesitation between them come forward. The film proceeds in a lyrical register. Keiji Sada and Ineko Arima appear in the hundred and twenty nine minute film, a Japanese production Masaki Kobayashi finished in 1956.