'Great Absence' Review: A Deft, Complex, Wrenching Dementia Drama
Kei Chika-ura's delicately devastating second feature "Great Absence" excavates a life and a love wrapped in the torn tissue of mental deterioration.
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Kei Chika-ura's delicately devastating second feature "Great Absence" excavates a life and a love wrapped in the torn tissue of mental deterioration.
Great Absence, the second film from Japanese director Kei Chika-ura, is receiving its world premiere in Toronto film festival’s Platform section.
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Feb. 5 To his credit, Shimizu creates a nightmarish forest world that reminds us why, in certain lights and moods, tree branches can look like clawing hands and the trees themselves become ominous beings that threaten and loom. It helps that his main setting is Aokigahara, the so-called jukai (sea of trees) at the foot of Mount Fuji that has become notorious as a magnet for the suicidal. It has also inspired several films, including the widely panned 2015 Gus Van Sant drama, “The Sea of Trees.” With its lumpy, moss-covered volcanic surfaces and dense growth of spindly, twisted trees, Aok...