Heaven’s Story

By Zeze Takahisa (Japan)

Berlinale Forum

If you’re up for a 4 ½ hours “Bunraku-play meets soap-opera” movie, then Heaven’s Story is definitely the one to watch. The narrative revolves around a series of characters whose lives have been turned around after being exposed to irrational murders either from the position of killers, or as victims’ relatives. Throughout the film, the initially apparently separate narrative threads mingle and interconnect, while characters interchange positions leaving no clear distinctions between good and bad, guilty and innocent.

Sako’s entire family was murdered by a stranger who later killed himself, while Tomoki’s wife and daughter were killed by an underage teenager, Mitsuo. Although not knowing each other, both Sako and Tomoki decide not to rest until vengeance is completed and Mitsuo dead. But eight years pass, Tomoki has remarried and having been blessed with another baby daughter, is no longer so eager to complete his resolution. Sako on the other hand, wasn’t able to free herself from the haunting past memories, therefore, when Mitsuo gets released in order to take care of an Alzheimers-afflicted puppet maker, she decides to take matters into her own hands.

The actions of the protagonists, together with the various intersections with other people sharing similar dramas, are placed under the mysticism of the Japanese theater of masks. Also the characters seem to be performing on a stage in the sense that they lack substance when the camera is not on them as if retreating behind the scene to a place where they suffer no alteration, only to return again in the spotlight to resume their previous set of emotions. All the major emotional shifts happen in front of our eyes even though the story has enough time gaps for changes to occur also in the moments that we don’t see.

Takahinsa devotes as well a large amount time to the observation of nature and how it plays a role in the story, in accordance with the Japanese belief that nobody actually dies but somehow is reincarnated as bugs, grass or other various organisms. Moreover, in both parts the characters are somehow spatially united by sharing the same neighborhood. All these elements somehow contribute to the film’s poetry and make it rather interesting to watch, despite its length.

Heaven’s Story is not a film that makes you fall crazily in love with it, but it’s also not one you’d hate. Surprisingly people actually stayed all the way to the end which, considering the late hour and the fact that it does last quite long, says a lot. If you have the time for it and especially if you’re into Japanese culture, you should consider taking a look at this rather unusually constructed story.