“The worst walls are the ones you
put there -- you build yourself. Those are the
high ones, the thick ones, the ones with no
doors.” - Ursula LeGuin
In Japan, cherry blossoms are symbolic of the
transient nature of life, requiring only one
week to bloom and then fall. In Cherry Blossoms,
the Ozu-like film by director Doris Dorrie, a
practicing Zen Buddhist, is a rare film about a
subject that Hollywood usually avoids, aging and
death. Despite a few one-dimensional
characterizations, it is a charming and often
moving work that has a feeling for the silences,
the places within us that we have suppressed,
but which are always just beneath the surface. A
long-time married couple Rudi Angermeier (Elmar
Wepper) and his wife Trudi (Hannelore Elsner),
live in a small German town. Rudi is tied to a
routine.
Each day, he takes the same train to his job as
a civil servant, eats a sandwich and an apple at
the same hour, and rarely attempts anything new
or adventurous. On the other hand, Trudi has
never stopped dreaming, longing to go to Japan
to become a Butoh dancer. When Rudi is diagnosed
with a terminal illness, Trudi is unable to
bring herself to tell Rudi the truth. She
instead suggests that it would be a good time
for them to travel to Berlin to see their
children, Klaus (Felix Eitner) who is married
with two children, and their lesbian daughter
Karolin (Birgit Minichmayr) who lives with her
partner Franzi (Nadja Uhl). Things do not go
well, however.
Mirroring the clash of generations in Ozu's
Tokyo Story, the children are indifferent,
making it clear that they do not have time to
spend with their parents and seeming to regard
their visit as an intrusion. Only Franzi makes
the parents feel as if they are appreciated,
taking them on sightseeing trips around the
city. Shockingly, Trudi dies suddenly during a
visit to the beach near the Baltic Sea, and a
confused and lonely Rudi decides to visit their
youngest son Karl (Maximilian Brueckner) in
Tokyo, seeking to be close to his wife in spirit
by fulfilling her dream of going to Japan.
He arrives during the time of the cherry
blossoms where the view of the white Sakura
blossoms surrounded by views of mountains and
water is stunning. It is here that each spring,
in the ritual known as Hanami, Japanese sit
under the blossoming trees to celebrate the
lives of those close to them who have passed
away. Unfortunately, the journey is marred by
Karl's coldness towards his father who, he
believes, has had little interest in his life.
Feeling sad and rejected, in the park one day,
Rudi meets Yu (Aya Irizuki), an
eighteen-year-old homeless street artist
performing Butoh, a dance expressing intense
emotions through slow, controlled, and sometimes
distorted movements, often performed in white
body makeup and painted face.
Drawn to each other, their innocent communion
leads them to Mount Fuji - Rudi's wife's dream.
As Rudi symbolically becomes both himself and
his wife, they celebrate and mourn their own
love and loss. Cherry Blossoms suggests that we
often prevent our true self from fully
expressing itself, either to ourselves or each
other, “to blossom like the cherry tree." For
Rudi, after a lifetime of suppression, the day
came, as author Anais Nin put it, “when the risk
to remain tight in the bud was more painful than
the risk it took to blossom.”
GRADE: B+
