"Poignant and funny, woven from family, history, geography and grief, this documentary had me at its opening shot of Kimi Takesue's grandfather (a man the age my father would be if he still were here) going through his daily routine of countless push-ups, and moving on from there to watering his garden, clipping coupons and having his meals, while his granddaughter, offscreen, peppers him with questions. There is a rhythm to this devotional film driven by the recent grief shared by grandfather and granddaughter for the grandmother and wife who has died, and the coming grief for a courageous man facing his own ending - the source of the mysterious title, a medical prognosis taken up by the patient, contemplative, facing forward into his future.
That rhythm, oceanic and Pacific - Hawaii is Tom's home, though Japan is his patrimony - punctuates the scenes of Kimi and Tom doing his daily life together. The sublime of the quotidian is embraced in turning from palms, sky and sea back to the filmmaker and her subject, engaged in the deliberate inquiries that she must pursue while his stories are still present in his words, in his voice, not just in photos. As kin can do, he is utterly at ease telling of his long life with its work and love, dancing and bickering, and an attitude born out of the simple truth that you "cannot grieve all your life." Kimi has hard questions about a daughter lost to death too young, and how he and his wife, Kimi's grandmother, whom we see aging through photography made history and biography, struggled together to keep on beyond loss.
We come to feel love for this kindly, sometimes querulous man, and we share Kimi's grief in her loss, even as she has drawn a detailed cinematic portrait of what makes every life exemplary and ordinary, quotidian and sublime, and not forgotten. "
That rhythm, oceanic and Pacific - Hawaii is Tom's home, though Japan is his patrimony - punctuates the scenes of Kimi and Tom doing his daily life together. The sublime of the quotidian is embraced in turning from palms, sky and sea back to the filmmaker and her subject, engaged in the deliberate inquiries that she must pursue while his stories are still present in his words, in his voice, not just in photos. As kin can do, he is utterly at ease telling of his long life with its work and love, dancing and bickering, and an attitude born out of the simple truth that you "cannot grieve all your life." Kimi has hard questions about a daughter lost to death too young, and how he and his wife, Kimi's grandmother, whom we see aging through photography made history and biography, struggled together to keep on beyond loss.
We come to feel love for this kindly, sometimes querulous man, and we share Kimi's grief in her loss, even as she has drawn a detailed cinematic portrait of what makes every life exemplary and ordinary, quotidian and sublime, and not forgotten. "
