Perhaps Sōmai's most narratively discombobulated film but this is an absolute stunner with Sōmai's formal precision and rapturously effective cinematic grammar managing to evoke a continuously entrancing experience of profound sadness and incisive commentary related to self, interiority, and societal impediments. Operating between modes of magical realism and social realism, Lost Chapter of Snow: Passion is a challenging and provocative experience that I found hard to pin down. It's so emotive and consistently enthralling in the way it relays feelings of alienation and abandonment, detailing the intrinsic confusion related to expressing oneself outwardly - feelings themselves ultimately being more illusive than we often acknowledge in contemporary life, our interiority a constant navigation in itself. It could be argued the film is unfocused but I hardly cared. Sōmai is such an exquisite artist when it comes to aesthetics but his acute understanding of youth continues to stand out to me. For Sōmai, youth being confronted with the societal order and ways of the world isn't merely a rite of passage, it is a shock to the system, an injustice in a sense in which the formulation of identity via self-discovery is a constant negotiation between our more pure, internal impulses and the external realities of contemporary life. Adolescence struggle is given existential gravitas, it's a balancing act of egoism intrinsic to self and the need for altruism, a necessity of living a meaningful social life. What Lost Chapter of Snow: Passion keenly understands is how egoism and altruism aren't diametrically opposed, they are commingled ideals, all in the service of forming a strong ontology of self-informed by epistemic realities. Balance feels like a major theme here, and while I'd be lying if I said I fully understood everything going on in this film, I found this to be an entrancing work full of beauty, pain, and wonderment that is full of maturity, incisive commentary related to both communal ills (Japanese familial orthodoxy) as well as more individualistic investigations of self.
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AuthorLove of all things cinema brought me here. Archives
June 2023
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