GREEN GRASS

A Dreamlike Exploration of a Father-Son Relationship

Venue: Ikebukuro Humax Cinemas: September 23 (Sat) to September 28 (Thu)
Official website: greengrass-movie.com/
Theater website: www.humax-cinema.co.jp/ikebukuro/access
Theater website: www.humax-cinema.co.jp/ikebukuro/
Trailer: https://bit.ly/3rvL03J
Tariff:  General: ¥1,900
Talk event: On Sept. 28 (Thu), the director, star and Keishi Otomo (Rurouni Kenshin director) will appear after the screening.

Title: Green Grass 生まれかわる命 (Green Grass Umarekawaru Inochi)
Director: Ignacio Ruiz (Ignacio Ruiz)
Duration: 100 min

If you’re a fan of Andrei Tarkovsky’s sumptuously beautiful ruminations on spiritual and metaphysical themes, run, don’t walk, to the Humax Cinema in Ikebukuro for the (too-) short run of Ignacio Ruiz’s Green Grass. The first ever Chilean-Japanese co-production recently won the Best Cinematography Award at Portugal’s Cine Ceara film festival, and is that rare arthouse feature that refuses to compromise in its storytelling and pacing. With dialogue in both Spanish and Japanese, it is screening with English subs for the duration of its runs in Tokyo, Osaka and beyond.

New York-based Japanese actor Masataka Ishizaki, who also cowrote the script with Ruiz, stars as Makoto, a 30-something businessman who awakens on an unknown beach, flags down a truck and begins meeting people who seem just as lost as he is. When he tries to learn more about where he is, or to find his way home, he is always gently silenced and told to wait. Meanwhile, his father Kiyoshi (acclaimed actor Tokuma Nishioka) learns that Makoto has died, and takes the news very hard. As he attempts to get over his grief, assisted by his devoted secretary-chauffeur (Yukiyoshi Ozawa), it’s clear that he is plagued with regret.

Like Makoto, the audience never learns what happened before he arrives in the afterlife, and the rift in the relationship with his father remains unexplained. Yet Green Grass allows father and son to find a way to make peace with their pasts and to move on, albeit separately.

Filled with breathtaking views of the Chilean countryside, and seemingly shot in natural lighting (with several scenes taking place during rapturously lit magic hours), the film demands patience of viewers — a message that is also communicated to the main characters. Comments Ruiz, “This idea is manifested throughout the film, shown through a naturalist world that constantly breaks with the narrative, where Latin American magic realism is crossed with the oriental way to make time and space be felt as living paintings framed by a cinematic image.”

Ikebukuro Humax Cinema: