CASTING BLOSSOMS TO THE SKY (2012)

Casting Blossoms to the Sky, Kono sora no hana: Nagaoka hanabi monogatari (2012)
Directed by: Nobuhiko Ôbayashi
Written by: Koji Hasegawa, Nobuhiko Obayashi
Starring: Akira Emoto, Minami Inomata, Takehiro Murata, Yasuko Matsuyuki

Casting Blossoms to the Sky (2012) Available now from Third Window Films

Part of the Nobuhiko Obayashi Anti-War Trilogy

Much like Seven Weeks this is a story about the effects of war, spanning various time periods and told through the remembrance of an ensemble. It also has many moments based on true stories and accounts taken from real people. There are verbal family histories, low budget edutainment breaks, and a whole lot of newspaper clippings. However, it’s described by one of the main characters as a journey into a dreamland. Does Obayashi’s interest in strange green-screen effects and ghost stories form a cohesive narrative about tragedy, or does it start to come unstuck with such a long running time and so many disparate elements?

Reiko (Yasuko Matsuyuki) is a journalist travelling to the city of Nagaoka to write about local history after a 2011 earthquake. She’s also interested in seeing a play being organised by a group of school children about the bombing of civilians during The Second World War. Her journey into a dream, or more accurately her imagination, brings her to stories of natural disasters and human destruction. It’s also a chance to see a regional ‘Phoenix’ fireworks display as part of a memorial ceremony. The blossoms of the title refer to this event in which the power of chemistry is put to a more creative use than bullets and bombs. But amongst all this research a boyfriend she left eighteen years ago is on her mind.

The upcoming preparations and festivities, the aftermath of the disaster, and the deaths of entire families in 1945, are the main threads, but there are more to consider as things go on. Tying all of this together is a familiar idea that everyone’s lives have been touched by sadness and loss in the war, causing trauma that lasts generations or causing communities to come together. It’s no mistake that the process of building a huge firework full of different chemicals is shown as being visually similar to the nuclear implosion device of the A-Bomb. Everyone in the film deals with the past and present in different ways; some dance, some read to children, some ride unicycles.

With so many voices the whole thing starts to feel more like a real documentary than Seven Weeks. Which is a pro and a con; it might be informative and full of different perspectives but lacks the distinct personal core. Instead there are all kinds of talking heads and tour guides from taxi drivers to school teachers. There’s a matter of fact style to some of the darkest recollections while some sequences feel like TV history shows with low resolution CGI depicting B-29 bombers and incendiary bombs. Some of the leads are pretty inexpressive during the current day melodrama scenes but the composite characters re-telling stories about sombre times are all very compelling.

As a result all of the real history is engaging but some of the fictional character threads are less natural and their goals are sometimes less coherent. The play being written by schoolgirl Hana (Minami Inomata) has some impact early on but is eventually dulled by repetitive storytelling. The message of its title ‘There’s Still Time Before a War’ suggests that people should be constructive in times of peace. But some of the reasons why, and details such as Japan’s wartime involvement in Chinese and Russian territories, are rushed through so quickly they seem like obligatory foot-notes rather than a serious inclusion. Certain chapters in the film (many involving Hana) are too long-winded and should have been shortened to expand on other details.

As a result there’s sometimes an emotional disconnect between the testimony of real victims and the characters discussing lost romance as if they’re in a soap opera. Even their talk about current nuclear power issues and floods sometimes feels stilted. Which is ironic when many of the least realistic choices, destruction shown through imagined fire and faces of anguish shown through paintings, are the most impactful. Obayashi knows how to employ these kinds of creative choices but lets the film become busy and distracted elsewhere. Like his other projects it’s an experience that mixes the nostalgic and the harrowing but it should have allowed to get further from naive sentiment.

Could war be avoided if people made fireworks instead of bombs? Would American pilots have avoided killing so many civilians if they could see the faces of the children? These are shallow observations in the light of serious issues, many of which the story does actually cover. As a result it can feel like a mixed bag rather than a focused series of records and memories. It might be true that tsunamis bring people together in a different way to armed conflict, but how these things are connected to human nature needs a clearer examination. As a look at a region’s history it’s often shocking. As a drama about the past colliding with the present it’s stylish and stark in equal measure. But on the whole it needs to be far less unwieldy.