The Best Old Movies on a Big Screen This Week: NYC Repertory Cinema Picks, June 29-July 5
Hanezu (2011)
Directed by Naomi Kawase
Kawase’s worldview seems to have been wrenched from about a foot and a half in the earth. Death and tenderness hold hands. Brutality and sex are never far apart. Lovers are little more than insects on mountains who are stuck in romantic longing an eternity could not requite. This fable is among her finest statements on the cosmic indifference shown for our entanglements. A woodworker (symbolic repurposing of nature) named Takumi falls for an old classmate named Kayoko, whose marriage to a PR guy (symbolic modern career promising what can’t be delivered) doesn’t fulfill her. The closer Takumi grows to Kayoko, the more dependent he becomes on the idea of their togetherness in modern terms (a family, shared property), the further the lovers drift from nature. Kawase understands how doggedly we betray our emotional needs, how doing the right thing is another way of trapping ourselves and Hanezu is fittingly full of wonder, peace and muted carnage. There can be a way to remain human without turning our back on the ancient logic all around us, but we have to stop churning up the present in search of a mythic, unreliable future. Scout Tafoya (July 2, 8pm; July 11, 7pm at MoMA’s Kawase retrospective)