Recently I heard there is a special kind of forest fire that can survive winter, kindling fire, they call it. The fire dims down into slow burning embers that slowly burn under snow, transcending seasons.
This is what this film has been, slowly burning away inside my body, almost extinguished. The script has gone through several actual rewrites and even more imagined ones. Some of the ideas have emerged only to be released again back to the lake.
But now finally I felt the real flame starting to emerge, bringing a new image that now feels complete, a story that has beginning and end, but also enough breathing room to let it develop further, and to let actors and actresses to bring their own spirit to the work, which I think is extremely important.
Pseudo documentaries, those in the likes of Suwa Nobuhiro’s 2Dyuo or Kawase Naomi’s films, or District 9 with the “interviews” of the African people are brilliant. Documentaries are afterall search of “realism”, in a way that CG director would look for photorealism in the VFX work.
Ryoko, the character in this film is innocent woman like women in Lars von Triers films, too honest for her own good but also the kind of person I wish more would exist, but she also is obsessed in reality. For her it is romantic to sleep in hard wood of kitchen when she feels hurt. Painkillers or booze would not work for her.
I think Heart Sutra makes some great movie dialogue and subject matter, death is indeed the ultimate kind of reality. But this is all more playing with philosophical constructs and fun with poetry than Buddhism like in Kim Ki-Duk films.
The story From the Water’s Edge that I wrote several years ago also features a woman called Ryoko and it also tells a story of a loss. There are some parallels to the story and few of the scenes are also included, those who have read the story will recognize a certain scene involving burning wind turbines on sea.
This year I have been afraid that the embers under the ice are getting extinguished, disappearing forever. But now I feel alive again.
This piece is dedicated to the new people I have met recently in my life.
Thank you for saving the flame in me.
