Passage
of Life (2017): Written and directed by Akio
Fujimoto. Starring: Kaung Myat Thu, Khin Myat Thu, Issace, Htet Myat Naing,
and Yuki Kitagawa. Running Time: 98 minutes.
Rating:
4/4
As
justified as much of the attention has been in recent years on the plight of
refugees in, entering, or trying/hoping to enter Europe, it has often
overshadowed or crowded out attention to other, equally important refugee and
migrant situations in other parts of the world.
A prime example of this is those fleeing the military government of
Burma, especially members of the country’s Muslim Rohingya minority. Although the characters of this particular
story are Buddhist and not Rohingya, Passage
of Life is nonetheless essential in how it uses the experience of a Burmese
family struggling to build a new life in Japan to remind us that the suffering
of the lost and destitute is a truly global crisis of the human heart.
The
film starts off being about the parents, and their struggles to come to grips
with their precarious legal status in Japan, which, despite their longtime residence
and their kids’ presence in the school system, could be uprooted at any
time. By the end, it shifts focus to
being a story about the children and how, in certain ways, they suffer even more
deeply than the parents do, despite the fact that they are too young to fully
understand what is happening around them.
They only know that something is wrong- they sense it, instinctively-
and they are troubled by this. They
carry most of the family’s pathos in their very bearing, containing both the
hope of a better tomorrow and the desperate worry that only the same old
struggle awaits them.
The
film utilizes simple, stark, camerawork that gives the story a
quasi-documentary feel. Indeed, the
story is told with such minimalistic nuance, and the interactions between the
family members (some of whom are actually related to each other) are so
effortlessly natural, that I had to repeatedly remind myself that this was NOT,
in fact, real found footage. The primary
question that occupies the mind of the parents is if it is worth them staying
together in Japan. The mother misses her
country terribly and never seems at ease when not with her relatives. The father doesn’t even consider this a possibility. Eventually, either the unstoppable force or
the immovable object must yield, and they do decide to part. Whether or not they ever will, can, or even want
to find their way back together is left open by the end. One of the best shots in the movie is of the
father, at the moment where the full weight of his plight comes down on his
shoulders; he tries to keep the brave face he’s managed to hold all these
years, and, finally, finds that he can’t.
That
sounds like it should be the film’s climax, but it’s not even at the halfway
part. It is when we are in Burma that
the film moves its focus to the children, as their confusion and anger over the
loss of the only home they remember starts to eat at them.
How
is it that we continuously find ways to inflict this pain on children? We are born innocent and without bias or
prejudice, but the world inevitably hammers it into us until it sets, and we
are hardened. With each new generation,
we glimpse a vision of this chain being broken, but it has still never
happened. And the worst part is that
none of the pain or separation the family feels is in any way justified or
necessary. It never needed to
happen.
Above
all else, the movie struggles with the question of what home really is. Can a “home” be movable? Flexible?
Should it be flexible? Its real
power, in the end, comes from understanding that even when a home or concept of
it has been chosen, by choosing and, in part, closing off others there are
still painful compromises and sacrifices that this ultimately requires, and it
never is, never will be, easy.
This
is masterfully encapsulated in the movie’s final scene, a wrenching moment, the
audio of which continues to play for some time over the scrolling of the end
credits. Debut films don’t get much
better than this. Akio Fujimoto has
given the world one of the year’s best, and most essential films, in a time
where the cries of humanity need to be heard more than ever.
-Noah Franc
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