a chronicle of my mother

わが母の記

Even if you forget everything, love will still remain

I have to watch this again.  My mind wasn't in it when I started watching it - part of the reason I couldn't quite picture the family tree which was essential in understanding the film.  Nonetheless, I cried towards the end.  One of those movies worth watching twice.

It depicts the love between a writer (井上靖 Yasushi Inoue） and his mother: Inoue is left at a relative's place as a child.  Fast forward fifty years, he has become a successful writer, and his mother has started to lose her memory.  Inoue has always had hard feelings towards his mother, but his attitude starts to change when he realizes she no longer recognizes him and has even forgotten how she "deserted" him.  "If she doesn't remember, what's the point in holding grudge against her?"  He decides to take care of her at his place and writes about her in his novel (which this film is based on).  His daughters also take great care of their senile grandmother.

After a couple of years, when Inoue sits across his mother, she tells him that she has a story to tell (as usual).  This time, it's about a woman who took her son away.  "She wouldn't tell me where my son is."
Inoue asks, "But you left him, didn't you?"
His mother looks away and looks out at the garden.  "It has stopped raining.  The puddle at the playground.  ... ... ...the Pacific Ocean, the Atlantic Ocean, the Sea of Japan.  But my favorite is the channel - the channel in the middle of nowhere, the channel I cross with Mom.  The channel I cross with Mom.  The channel..."
It was a poem Inoue had written when he was a child.  He starts crying in spite of himself.

Towards the end, all family members panic when they realize their Grandma has disappeared - she had gone out on a journey to find her son.  When the grand-daughter finally finds her, she calls Inoue that Grandma is heading for the seaside where she left her son.  Inoue decides to wait for his mother at the sea.  It was sad and heartwarming at the same time how he decided to be there so that it would sort of fit the world in his mother's head.

As I watched the grandma lose more and more of her memory, it seemed to me like she became more and more innocent.  That was what made her endearing, and it really reminded me that becoming senile meant going back to being a child.  I hoped my own grandma would be as charming as her if she ever lost all her memory.  But then, I thought maybe the grandma in the film was endearing because Inoue wrote about her with a lot of love.

There's a scene towards the end where Inoue's wife tells him why his mother had left him at the relative's place.  Inoue asks why she didn't tell him sooner.  His wife says, "You wouldn't listen.  It's only after your mother became senile that you changed your attitude.  You had a grudge against her.  Why should I try to do something about it when that was what made you write all the amazing stories you wrote?"  Inoue's daughter says the same thing earlier: a canary that forgot its grudge cannot sing.

But then again, I thought he may have written one of his best works when he lost or rather let go of that drive.  Maybe the process of facing his wound and forgiving was what made this chronicle powerful yet delicate and calm.