★★★ 8 views of Lake Biwa An Estonian tale based on Japanese poetry The source was, originally, a metaphor for eight Japanese poems ba
★★★ 8 views of Lake Biwa
An Estonian tale based on Japanese poetry
The source was, originally, a metaphor for eight Japanese poems based on a Chinese poem titled “Eight Views of Lake Jiaojiang,” created in the 11th century and translated into illustrations since then. The words of these poems/drawings are inspired by that nature, dealing with life on the banks of that lake and the aesthetics of that life (according to a book entitled “Poetry and Painting in Song China” about the poetry of historic China, written by Alfreda Mörk in 2000).
The influence of these poems and drawings spread to Japan and Korea in that time period, and poems with different words were written after that. These texts remained alive thanks to their circulation in South Asian literature, and later spread in the West due to the interest of Chinese and Japanese cultures in particular. What Estonian director Marku Rath does is transfer it to the events of his film without ignoring the Japanese source on which he relied as inspiration and worked on his film.
A tale of two teenage friends who are friends in an emotional transition. One of them is Hanaki (Elena Masing), the only survivor among the passengers of a boat that sank in an Estonian lake, where the events take place, even though Lake Biwa, which is in the title, is a Japanese lake. Both Estonian girls express their vision and aspirations in this miniature lakeside village. Hanaki is experiencing emotional turmoil after the incident. The story extends this situation and conveys the plain societal environment around it for about two hours. But there are not enough events to support this expansion. Also, the relationship between Japanese poetry (which appears as an interval from time to time) and what is going on is uninteresting and feeble. Rat divides the film into eight parts, each of which refers to the original (“Rainy Night,” “Passion over a Temple in the Mountain,” “Evening Snow,” etc.) before the film continues its story.
What is successful in the film Rat is to transform his work into a poetic state in turn, despite the lackluster relationship with the original. His long shots of the gray natural landscape, the water, and its role in the lives of those who live in that village, as well as the suggestion, through the image among other elements, of the mystery of the lake give the film its aesthetics and impose a degree of following.
In terms of characters, the director replaces long shots with close ones and conveys the femininity of his two heroines in a good dramatic fashion. The film uses the element of monologue. Hanaki exchanges a constant whisper with her friend, similar to what Ingmar Bergman used to do. In fact, there is a clear pragmatic tendency in this film, if not for anything, because of the whispered style of expression of the innermost feelings of its two heroines.
* Screenings: Rotterdam Film Festival and Estonia’s nomination for the Oscar for Best Foreign Film (2025).
Dealing with the undead ★★★☆
Dancing with the dead
This Norwegian film is the debut feature from its director Thea Hvistendhal (and her second feature film after her documentary The Monkey and the Mouth) and is connected by a loose thread to a low horror film she achieved in 2019 entitled “Children of Heaven.” Both are films that tap on the door of horror films with unexpected composed and sobriety. There is constant fear and expectation of the worst, but the director will not aim to speed up the pace in order to achieve this goal. Thus, the horror that partly revolves around those returning from the dead (“zombies” or otherwise) that you deal with in the film is the horror of suggestion and expectations, not the horror of the viewer. Even the living dead do not resemble those we see in American films. They do not extend their hands forward and drag their feet in pursuit of prey.
“Dealing with the Undead” (Anonymous Kontakup Nordic)
In “Dealing with the Undead,” there are three separate stories that the film moves between automatically: We have Anna (Renata Rainsvi) losing her son. David (Anders Danielsen Lee) loses his wife, Eva (Bahar Pars), and elderly Tora loses her partner, Elizabeth (Olga Damani). Each of these missing people died at different times, and each of them came back to life in a way that no one expected, let alone for no known reason.
The director supports these paradoxes with strange phenomena such as power outages and car sirens, among others. Its depiction of the city is as gloomy as the lives the film’s characters live. But what is really imperative here is that the film deals with the loneliness of those in contact with the dead. For Anna and David, it is a sudden death that leaves them in great grief. For Tora, it is a death that happened recently. The three are shocked by the sudden absence and return from it. Director Tia creates an expressive scene of Tia and her quiet friend Elizabeth, dancing to the tunes of Nina Simone’s song “Ne me quitte pas,” which Jacques Brel released in 1959.
It is not the film of the living dead that the viewer has in mind, but rather a closer look at action and reaction to absence and presence. All of this is done in pale colors and premature lighting, which creates a chilly atmosphere, like the chilly of the dead. After a while, the viewer will be looking for the event and not the suggestion, and this is what the director delays for the last third of an hour or so without the film succeeding in providing a parallel between mystery and suspense. Her management of the film is good in artistic treatment. A little less dramatic.
*Shows: Sundance Film Festival.
★ feeble | ★★: middle| ★★★: Good | ★★★★ Very good | ★★★★★: Excellent
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