David Lynch Blogathon

To me, David Lynch is the most singular, important filmmaker and artist working in America currently. With his oeuvre spanning uninhibited experimental oddities to mildly populist fare with mysterious, utterly unconventional elements, and with his unfathomable ability to gain a sort of unadulterated critical and creative freedom on nearly all of his projects, Lynch has come to nearly represent cinema as an art in the United States. And ironically, given his salient interest in Hollywood as an environment ("the air in Los Angeles..."), he has managed to continue a tradition of successful off-the-beaten-path filmmaking, variably expressing disinterest in the commercial efforts of The Machine.

Tragically, in this light, I have come to realize that I have seen nearly all of his films but have not written about them. It comes as quite a shock given the fact that his films have elicited perhaps more hardcore contemplation out of me than the films of any other living director. Therefore, from July 21st to August 15th, I have decided to activate a David Lynch Blogathon. I will be watching every one of his feature films sequentially, as well as taking into account some of the more unseen shorts. Of course, there is a small amount of his work that was difficult for me to obtain, so some have been left out, but I believe the pieces that I will explore owe a great deal to Lynch's sensibility in general. I have never participated in such a thorough and relentless investigation of one artist's career, so I am hoping that doing so will be a way to truly probe the mind of Lynch the artist, Lynch the entertainer, and Lynch the enigma. Below, I have listed the dates that I plan to write about each work, although the specific times of their publishing are subject to fluctuation over the course of their respective days. Also, anyone interested in joining in on the fun is encouraged to either leave feedback here on my blog, or even write about the films on your own blog. I'd gladly link to such articles.

7/21: Early Shorts (Six Men Getting Sick (1966), The Alphabet (1968), The Grandmother (1970))

7/23: Eraserhead (1977)

7/28: Elephant Man (1980)

7/30: Dune (1984)

8/1: Blue Velvet (1986)

8/3: The Cowboy and the Frenchman (Short, 1988) and Wild at Heart (1990)

8/5: Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992)

8/7: Premonition Following an Evil Deed (Short, 1995) and Lost Highway (1997)

8/9: The Straight Story (1999)

8/11: Mulholland Dr. (2001)

8/13: Inland Empire (2006)

The Last Mistress (Une vieille maîtresse) A Film by Catherine Breillat (2007)

Catherine Breillat's The Last Mistress kicks off like a demure French period piece that will seem closer to reading Jane Austen than it will like witnessing Breillat's explicit sensibilities. In 19th century France, we see the prestigious elderly discuss thoroughly the romantic exploits of a young, penniless aristocrat named Ryno de Marigny (Fu'ad Ait Aattou), whose impending marriage to a wealthy blonde, Hermangarde (Roxane Mesquida), is somewhat marred by his ten-year connection to his Spanish mistress, Vellini (Asia Argento). Their conversations move in a heavily mannered fashion, steeping us in what is perceived as the ethical wisdom of the time, and Breillat's camera is chiefly a respectful, non-confrontational observer, serving the dialogue more than satisfying the opulent surroundings. Gradually however, once Breillat has established her milieu dutifully, giving it a classic, sedate period treatment, abstractions begin to seep into the material. Once we're ready to confirm that Breillat has put the provocative eroticism of her previous features behind her, something magical happens, and dark, conflicting undertones start jabbing their way tangentially into the material. It's like the otherworldly eroticism of David Lynch broke through its cage and snuck into a Merchant-Ivory production. And although these spurts arrive abruptly (see Breillat's jarring cuts to Marigny and Vellini making love on the floor or Vellini's vampiric lunge at Marigny's bullet wound), they never feel staunchly out of place.

This phenomenon can perhaps be credited to Breillat's storytelling mechanics. Following the aforementioned setup, Hermangarde's grandmother (Yolande Moreau) confronts Ryno to gain insight on his relationship with Vellini, fearful that her granddaughter may be entering a faithless marriage. Ryno, convinced of his love for the petite Hermangarde, obliges, subjecting her to a long-winded account of his history with Vellini. Ryno's words are interspersed with flashbacks to this history, such detailed ones in fact that it comes as a surprise when Breillat positions the scene right back in the living room where Ryno and the intelligent grandmother discuss. Nonetheless, Breillat's temporal shifts are effortless; Ryno's entire story is told, from its fiery origins to its wanton disconnection, and the grandmother's dignified attention and perky ear for suspicion is never absent. She gives Ryno consent to marry Hermangarde, ushering in the third section of the film: the two elope, head to a peaceful seaside retreat (with shades of a medieval village), but Vellini remains attached, geographically and physically.

Marigny, with his plush skin and sizable red lips, and Vellini, with her distinguishable armpit hair and dangerous aggression, are both faintly androgynous figures, and it is their destructive physical relationship which is Breillat's main focus rather than that of Ryno and Hermangarde, which would have been the more conventional subject. (In fact, Hermangarde is rarely seen in the film, other than as a silent, enigmatic sweetheart.) In doing so, Breillat is taking the opportunity to challenge the sexual expectations under the established society as well as reverse the familiar storytelling angle. With Vellini's magnetic presence nearly hogging the screen, it is largely through her physicality and Ryno's reaction to it that we observe the French society. Argento is fearless with the performance, recalling the exoticism of Barbara Steele in Mario Bava's Black Sunday. She vacillates between feral and inaccessible and sensuous and desperate, always however, remaining an outsider. Vellini does not subscribe to the restrictions of proper romantic love, at once scoffing at Ryno's description of Hermangarde as a prude. Ultimately, it is this female bravado that keeps Ryno coming back even through his marriage to Hermangarde, and that Breillat so passionately embraces.



It is tempting though to denigrate The Last Mistress according to its feminist stance. Breillat is clearly making a comment on the dynamism of woman, their ability to stranglehold a male partner so shamelessly, and also of the necessity for female freedom. Certainly, Breillat's task becomes much easier when she adds enough makeup around Ryno's dreamy eyes. Ryno and Hermangarde's marriage scene is telling along this line; two scriptures are read from the Bible, one expounding on the spiritual connection of a male and female in marriage, the other, spoken by the Priest, reassuring Man's place as the creator of life, and therefore of his dominance over the female. Argento's character skillfully breaks this credo, luring Ryno into her new getaway by the sea in a seeming attempt at indefinite closure for him which inevitably results in more sex (often times more like manifestations of convoluted modern art sculptures). Reading the film this way is certainly important, but mustn't be the only line of thought, for it gets in the way of some of the broader points Breillat makes about fidelity, dignity, order, and the individuality that lurks beneath oppression.

When all is said and done, there's more to praise here than to decry. That Breillat does not relish the makeup, hair, costumes, and sets in a historical drama, and does not reveal obvious beauty, is admirable. The camerawork is never ostentatious, but rather shines when necessary, such as when dotting Ryno and his horse against the distant sea line and the archaic houses. Some scenes even brush up against the avant-garde, which she handles tactfully. In particular, Ryno recounts to Hermangarde's grandmother one stretch of time that he and Vellini spent in the Algerian desert, where the two gave birth to a baby that was soon after bit by a scorpion. Beside a fire that extinguishes the baby, the two make love on the sand, Argento's reeling, naked body eventually framed against the crystalline blue sky. This scene has more in common with Alejandro Jodorowsky's El Topo than it does with the talky drama that the film opens with. The Last Mistress shines with these types of conflicting qualities.

Brüno (2009) A Film by Larry Charles and Sacha Baron Cohen

If cinema is an arena solely for the impermanent, a place where the here and now is celebrated in an uproarious, trashy fashion, as the film theorist Siegfried Kracauer sanctioned, then Sacha Baron Cohen's wickedly subversive mockumentaries may be today's holy grail. After 2006's Borat shook the nation with its monumentally touchy anti-Semitic content, Baron Cohen, the brain behind it all, has returned with another feature film starring one of his over-the-top characters, whom he first introduced in the HBO series, Da Ali G Show. Borat was a guileless Kazakh who was way out of step with the world, preordaining his own quasi-ancient sensibility with complete obliviousness; Brüno is just as blind to societal mores, but he seems more a premonition of some sort of futuristic, hyper-image-driven America, where common decency has totally lost out to impulse. What better time for his revelatory comedy to slap us in the face, when the country seems just a wink away from his complete and utter debauchery? In fact, this film may have been better suited to the title of Fernando Meirelles' film last year: Blindness.

This is not to say that the film, directed by Larry Charles, browbeats us into seeing the wrong in society. The intention is hysterics, not didacticism. People in the audience were laughing boisterously, and I suspect that less than half left the theater discussing the underlying politics of the film. Brüno unrelentingly releases shockwaves of sight gags, silly monologues, and stirring political incorrectness; it moves so rapidly that there is little time to ponder the vicious satire Baron Cohen is serving up. It is only now, as I'm writing, that I'm nodding my head and thinking of how deep and textured Baron Cohen's cultural commentary is. I think this is the way the film is meant to be experienced, and as a one-time experience to be sure.

Brüno is a homosexual Austrian fashionista with sketchy national acclaim, yet he believes he's "the greatest person in the country". Like in Borat, something goes wrong on his home turf - in this case, Brüno, while sporting a new, totally velcro one-piece, trips over loads of material backstage before walking out onto the runway like a living hamper - which forges a drive in him to travel the world and gain fame. With his "assistant's assistant", he heads first to Los Angeles to become a movie star, then to the Middle East to solve a "crisis" (in a jab to the fashionable act of humanitarianism), and then back to the U.S. to convert himself to heterosexual in the southern states, a ditch effort that he believes will be his first step to fame. Along the way, he illegally adopts a little black boy (by sending him through the sub-deck of a plane in a box marked "fragile"), campaigns his grotesquely unappealing television show (which one of the television agents deems only appropriate for those with severe mental issues), and makes a brief stint in the army, a suggestion from his Jesus-loving gay converter. It has been criticized for taking much of the narrative structure of Borat, but what's successful should sometimes not be tampered with. Fortunately, the biting truths that Brüno reveals (those of homophobia, celebrity worship, parental neglect, religious fanaticism, and general bigotry) do not pale in comparison to Borat's.

Much of the reason why Brüno succeeds as a film comedy in its own right is its slapdash, documentary-like quality. The majority of the scenes are unstaged, which brings more forthrightness and shock to Baron Cohen's antics, of which politician Ron Paul, singer Paula Abdul, and Bono, among others, fall prey. Baron Cohen has been tried countless times by the people who appear in his films, simply because he often times gives them the bare minimum in information. Such reticence paves the way for better, more ecstatic responses. When scenes are staged, as in the film's final music video, which suggests Bruno may have gained the popularity he yearned for, the comedy suffers. Thankfully, Baron Cohen runs rampant around the film like an animal, providing us with repulsive, ludicrous, offensive, and utterly hilarious trash. Brüno and Borat prove there's nothing wrong with occasional trash, as long as you know what you're in for.

Tokyo Story (Tôkyô monogatari) A Film by Yasuijiro Ozu (1953)

In a Yasujiro Ozu film, there comes a breath of fresh air towards the final act, some stroke of indiscernible life that pricks up our senses. Up until this point, his films drift weightlessly but rigorously through the lives of a group of characters, most often a family. It can seem ponderous and without direction, but once this aforementioned moment arrives, as it does in Tokyo Story, it instantly transmutes extraordinary depth into the preceding scenes, causing one to yearn to look back and redigest. Inevitably, this means that Ozu's films are best understood and savored upon second viewing, but this does not mean the soft, sobering, melancholy layers of feeling are absent during an initial experience. As with all artists, his work rewards emotional and intellectual commitment from the audience, and Tokyo Story, his most widely praised film, stands as no exception, perhaps even truer to this sentiment than most.

The film wades through typical Ozu waters: family relations, generational conflicts, and repressed emotions are central themes. His main characters though are a pair of old parents - Shukishi (Chishu Ryu) and Tomi (Chieko Higashiyama) Hirayama - visiting their children rather than a daughter struggling with the prospect of courtship, as was most frequently his subject. Shukishi and Tomi leave their rural town excitedly and with high hopes of learning of the independent successes of their children. Unfortunately, against the backdrop of an increasingly modernizing postwar Tokyo, their four surviving children (of five), are all maintaining busy separate agendas that disallow them from providing their parents with true hospitality. Ironically, a non-blood relative, Noriko (Setsuko Hara), the young widow of their dead son, is the only dealer of kindness and understanding. In the face of concealed selfishness and thin attempts at bonding, the couple is eventually cast off to Atami, where they contemplate their children, their status as parents, and when they should return home.



However, in the film, guises do nothing to communicate underlying emotions, so the banal, somewhat stilted dialogue and gestures that are witnessed don't always seem to ring true. Shukishi observes how their children are "better than average", which is an awfully cliffnoted version of expressing the difficulty of coming to terms with the lives they have laid out for themselves, which, sadly, leave little room for filial piety. Later on, Shukishi and Tomi do catch the train home, but Tomi unexpectedly passes away upon return. This bludgeoning realization of mortality adds a powerful new dimension to the story (this is that moment I was speaking of) and sends the children into deep lament, racing to see her in the house that had previously been too distant to visit. Once again, even given the grave circumstances, truthful emotions are covered beneath the rituals that follow a death, the necessity of bringing along the mourning clothes, and the looming question of when it is acceptable to call it a day and return home. In one touching scene after all of the children have left, Noriko shares a moment alone with Shukishi in which she acknowledges his sorrow and expresses understanding towards his impending loneliness. After all, she too has lost a partner. Still, when Shukishi praises Noriko for being such an honest person, she has trouble taking it, condemning herself for being selfish and eventually holding back tears. In this moment we see the wealth of feelings that lie beneath Noriko's unrelenting smile, Shukishi's frequently muttered and plaintive "yes", and even the hustling narrow-mindedness of the children.

This repression is in line with Ozu's modest, nondescript stylistic approach. While his characters sort out their thoughts, he does not discontinue his static gaze as a token of respect to them as well as an invitation to the viewer to spot nuances in behavior that may point towards a broader understanding of the character. When a scene ends, Ozu lets us view the surrounding environment, its boats, train tracks, clothes hangers, smoke towers, and shops, to provide an opportunity for reflection. Ozu never bluntly asserts his position; he'd rather let the audience sort it out themselves, and the effect is pure. Never in Tokyo Story does something feel unrealistic. Instead, the film reveals the inevitable disappointments in life, the transience of all things, and the coldness behind the facade that is inherent in us all (Shukishi's neighbor states to him with a broad smile after Tomi's death, "you'll be quite lonely now, won't you?"). After all, Ozu's cinema is all about inevitability and how we must accept it.

Contempt (Le mépris) A Film by Jean-Luc Godard (1963)

At first glance, Jean-Luc Godard's Contempt may have seemed to the international art cinema audience of the 60's a first step towards commercialism for the previously radical director. The French theatrical poster borrowed its look from the sensational Hollywood advertisements of the time: one of the film's subjects, the gorgeous Brigitte Bardot, is painted prominently across the front, giving her the implication of a radiant Hollywood starlet rather than her Godardian counterpart - a cynical, utterly impenetrable woman. Contempt also had direct ties with America, both in the casting of Jack Palance as the hot-headed producer and in the involvement of American executives who asked Godard out of marketable interests to include Bardot's behind at least once in the film, a request that Godard did indeed heed in the opening minutes of the film. Although they wanted more than his brazenly dispassionate observation of Bardot's body while her playwright husband selflessly lauds it - a scene in which red and blue color filters are added with a seeming lack of motivation - Godard's story, based off of Alberto Moravia's A Ghost At Noon, does not call for any more sensuality as its central couple steadily disconnects.

Palance's character, Jeremy Prokosch, a stern American producer who must constantly speak through a cute interpreter, hands Paul Javal (Michel Piccoli in his first role), a failed, artistically flimsy French playwright, the job of commercializing a film script for The Odyssey which is to be directed by Fritz Lang. Prokosch does so with determination, taking Paul to see Lang (played by himself) in his studio and then capping off the request by inviting Paul and his wife for lunch at his place. Paul is mildly reluctant about the whole affair, in part because he wants to attempt to balance his artistic integrity and the prospect of payment but also because upon finishing lunch with the producer, he finds his wife Camille (Bardot) out of love with him. Is it because he took the job so spontaneously? Could it have been his offhand stab at flirtation with the producer's interpreter? Or is it something that perhaps he was entirely oblivious to?

This confusion is something that is frequently felt in the males of Godard's films, who are always artistic, aloof, and quietly apprehensive. It's always tempting to read these characters as Godard's onscreen surrogate, with their respective partners as his wife of the time. Little else would explain the aching honesty and firm handle of the thirty minute disintegration between Paul and Camille in the high-rise apartment that follows their lunch with Prokosch. Jonathan Rosenbaum observed a likeness to Antonioni in the film, and nowhere is that comparison more apt here. Camille shifts emotions like a chameleon in the scene, first calmly expressing discontent to Paul, then teasing him with love that doesn't exist, and finally growing cold and non-confrontational, pushing Paul into feelings of deep confusion and anger. The apartment, with its inhospitable, hygienic look - blank white walls, an occasional beaming red couch, and utterly underdeveloped design (there is a door that appears to have glass in the middle but proves to just be a wooden frame) - act as a perfect architectural counterpart to the unfolding drama. Godard shoots in long, distant takes that pan around the flat, usually leaving only one character in the frame while obscuring the other behind the empty modern walls. The labyrinthine structure of the interior acts like a funhouse, baffling Paul while the object he attempts to become close to seems to be perpetually receding into the layers of white. Not only is the scene dramatically involving, but it is also choreographed with deftness.



Godard's narrative flow isn't exactly polished, because the apartment scene lasts for so long it seems for a moment that it may even conclude the film. However, the two go to the pastoral shores of Capri to meet Lang and the producer to work on The Odyssey. In doing so, Godard makes an acute statement about the public and the private. Camille's behavior takes a visible leap from talky and incomprehensible to absolute silence and impenetrability. Here is where she makes her boldest statement of contempt, and although the beautiful setting seems ideal for love, Godard's camera, which remains restrained, absent of the frenetic visual style he introduced with Breathless, and almost completely without close-ups, emphasizes the irresolvable damage done to the marriage. This dichotomy between the public and private display of emotions also mirrors Paul's uncertainty about his art and whether he's selling out. He too oscillates between expression and stifling. Therefore, Godard's stance is that when cinema becomes an industry instead of an art, it interrupts on a personal level, a sentiment that is echoed in a shot of Paul and Camille seated on opposite sides of an aisle at a theater with a photographer placed in between, and also in the absurdly frequent interjections of Georges Delerue's overtly tragic and "cinematic" score.

Contempt is shot in CinemaScope and Technicolor by one of Godard's most noted collaborators, Raoul Coutard. Godard was not entirely keen on shooting the film in this format, after the bulk of his previous films were so much of the opposite, but in truth it was a blessing in disguise. The splashy colors in the film and the expansive, eye-catching compositions foreshadow much of Godard's subsequent work, especially Pierrot Le Fou, also lensed by Coutard. It is a film that sticks out in Godard's oeuvre for its uncharacteristic restraint and its focus on dissolution that owed a great deal to his influences. Also, it is one of his more deceptive films on the surface; despite the whiff of commodification it hinted at, it is actually a thoroughly rewarding art piece with a tapestry of visual and conceptual ideas.

Color Me Kubrick (2005) A Film by Brian Cook

I was drawn to this film completely on a whim when I saw that Stanley Kubrick's name was in the title and that John Malkovich sported the lead. Malkovich is an actor whom I truly appreciate, given his ability to bring such exuberance to a truly wide range of characters, and Kubrick is one of my favorite directors, so I was hoping the film would offer some additional insight on him. However, it turns out Color Me Kubrick is based on the true story of a Kubrick hack, a homosexual eccentric who persistently passed himself off as the director out of a longing for celebrity treatment, all the while having very little knowledge about Kubrick whatsoever. In this regard, I couldn't have been more wrong. The film was directed by one of Kubrick's longtime assistants, Brian Cook, which provided another possibility for the film to be infused with a never-before-seen sense of Kubrickian wisdom. Cook seems less interested in Kubrick though than he is in the seductive notion of celebrity and how it can cause fanzines to act immorally.

Malkovich's character, Alan Conway, is an absolute hoot, but is simultaneously set astray from reality. He quite voluntarily lives in a world that is outside of himself, never once hesitating when someone asks him his name before answering in James Bond-like fashion, "Stanley...Stanley Kubrick". A new day and frequently even a new hour means an entirely distinct new outfit for Alan, who plays dress-up with himself as if he were a doll. Furthermore, his accent seems to change sporadically with his clothing, sometimes bearing no relation at all. He can be muddled and dispassionate or sociable and drunkenly rambling within a short period of time, giving little concentration to the way that the actual Kubrick would behave in public, given he was in public in the first place. Along with Chris Marker, Kubrick is one of the most standoffish filmmakers in the history of cinema, but Conway goes out of his way to confront people and coax them into speaking about "his films".

Undeniably, Conway is an enormously interesting headcase, if only because he chose to imitate, out of the countless other more bombastic and flighty celebrities this world has to offer, a cerebral artist. He gets his due in the end though when delivered to a mental asylum after romping around the streets of London for years unabated. Throughout the film, we see him using his fraudulent name to hitch rides, pick up men, slip out of payment for drinks, and most importantly, levitate his self-confidence. Often times he will offer fake crew positions to these people, and in one instance, guarantees fame for a young metal band named after a Buñuel film ("The Exterminating Angels"), who would reportedly receive a central role in an upcoming film of his named after a neon sign he sees in passing on a taxi ride. Malkovich has a grand time as this character, sometimes going over the top but never becoming dull. He even makes a point to give his career another case of self-quotation, citing John Malkovich as an actor he considered for a part, bringing to mind Spike Jonze's Being John Malkovich, a film that revolved around him.

Technically speaking, Color Me Kubrick is so heavily referential that it ceases to be its own film. Granted, Cook is purposely making continuous allusions to Kubrick's work, both visually and aurally, but their interjections become so obvious that they are clunky. On a scene to scene basis, the film plays more like a game of spot-that-Kubrick reference, whether we're watching the spin of a dryer to Richard Strauss' Also sprach Zarathustra, a man getting tossed off a dock to the A Clockwork Orange theme, or Alan stumbling through the opulent lobby of the mental asylum to the distant sound of the lounge music that reverberates in one of the many ghost scenes of The Shining. Stripped of Kubrick's phenomenal photography, these scenes are nice homages at best and substantially inferior evil cousins at worst. Dramatically, the film is also thin, progressing more like a series of disconnected rehearsals than like a coherent narrative. Fortunately, these rehearsals are quite entertaining and Malkovich's daring performance does not hold back.

Cherry Blossoms (Kirschblüten - Hanami) A Film by Doris Dörrie (2008)

Rudi and Trudi are both nearing a point in their lives when it becomes increasingly essential to communicate true feelings, release inhibitions, celebrate inner desires, and break routine. Trudi, the wife, is aware of this. Rudi, who mechanically goes about his habits from day to day, is not. Trudi is also aware of Rudi's impending death from a terminal illness. Rudi is not. When Trudi manages to pry her husband from his humdrum groove and take him on a trip to Berlin to visit two of their equally disinterested children, Franzi and Klaus, Trudi startlingly dies in her sleep. These events, which bear a striking resemblance to Yasujiro Ozu's Tokyo Story, make up the initial half of German filmmaker Doris Dörrie's Cherry Blossoms.

The film is not just narratively akin to Ozu's seminal benchmark in humane cinema though; Dörrie's approach here - which to be sure, is quite arbitrary when looking at the rest of her unpredictable career (she may have the only film about a talking penis in film history to her credit) - is just as attune to the rhythms of life as the Japanese master. Documentary-style editing and camerawork is frequently interspersed with pleasant cutaways that are a product of Dörrie's impressionistic eye. Her camera has a way of vibrating every last ounce of life out of flies, flowers, trees, ocean waves, and even the most spiritless Toyko buildings. This, along with her ability to extract stellar, authentic performances from her cast, give Cherry Blossoms a genuine feel of verisimilitude, intimacy, and lightness even when the story moves towards more tearjerking territory.

Following Trudi's death, which rhythmically feels very much like a second half, Rudi departs for Tokyo to stay with his other son, the disenchanted Karl, while attending the Cherry Blossom Festival. He does so upon learning through hidden paraphernalia of Trudi's disguised personality, which withheld passionate interests in Japan and their sense of spirituality, embodied most tellingly by Butoh dancing, a form of dance in which women paint their faces white, wear vibrant clothing, and evoke the concepts of birth and death with an alertness to past memories. Although Rudi is somewhat shocked by this unearthing at first, he slowly becomes more and more enamored by the idea of living out Trudi's unfulfilled hopes, even going to the length of wearing her favorite sweater during the process. At the Cherry Blossom Festival, a celebration of the omnipresent flower which is a symbol of the beauty of ephemerality, Rudi encounters Yu (whose name is the source of one of the film's many bouts of light humor), a vagabond Butoh dancer who he uses as both a channel to transcendence and a sweet friend indicative of a new beginning.

His meeting of Yu also brings about the final stage of his existential journey: Mt. Fuji. Cherry Blossoms' "second half" is not quite as satisfying and well executed as its first though; sometimes, Dörrie views Rudi's sorrow with such diligence that he becomes hopeless and awkward, and she also overpronounces some of her symbols, specifically the cherry blossoms and the flies, which arrive repeatedly to remind us that all things come and go. More perceptive are the ongoing images of shadows, a motif that is imitated by the reflection of Mt. Fuji against a lake towards the end, quietly emphasizing people's capacity to harbor separate, more discrete personalities. Dörrie could have worked out some kinks in the finished product, but there's no denying that Cherry Blossoms has a staying intimacy and truthfulness about it.