Village Of Dreams

Village of Dreams (1996), Winner of the Silver Bear at the 1996 Berlin Film Festival, directed by Yoichi Higashi is one of the film Keiko McDonald wrote about inher book Reading A Japanese Film that I hadn't seen yet. It is a curious film in that it is based on a memoir by the painter Tashima Seizo and his identical twin brother Yukihiko who is also a painter. The film begins with some documentary footage of the two brothers meeting and talking about their time growing up in Koichi in Shikoku after WWII. Then it goes into flashback to 1948 when the brothers were nine and it chronicles their escapades in rural Japan at school, in nature fishing and catching eels as well as getting into trouble with the neighbors. The recently ended war is only referred to as the villagers curse Mac Arthur adn the land reforms that gave land to the people who worked it-taking it away from the landlords. There are some stunning scenes of the beauty of rural Shikoku throughout the film. It plays as a straightforward children's idyll until elements of magic realism take occur, which seems appropriate for a childhood memoir of artists who have a rich fantasy life. It is a moving portrait of a carefree childhood in a bygoen time and place.