Pretty Good

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

How wonderful it is to see this fine actress carry a film and carry it so beautifully.

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

"The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom" is an American documentary and the second work by writer and director Lucy Walker. Despite the title, this one is exclusively in the Japanese language, so you may want to get a good set of subtitles unless you speak that one. It runs for 39 minutes, but there is an extended version that i watched and this one runs for over 50 minutes. There is basically a clean cut in this film just like there is in the title. A bit over the first half is about the horrible tsunami that killed thousands of people and killed even more people's hopes, while the second half focuses on the beauty and meaning of cherry blossoms. Obviously the latter is seen as some kind of symbol for hope and revival after the tragic events and I must say this kind of metaphor really only works partially. Of course you should not expect this film to seek for solutions and ways to keep events like this from happening in the future, but it's really more about the simple people and their way back to some kind of happiness that obviously does not include scientific studies at all. So yeah, it is an okay documentary that includes some touching interviews early on, but despite the beautiful looks of the blossoms, the movie gets considerably weaker in the second half and almost feels a bit pretentious. Still overall, I give it a thumbs-up, but I guess the Oscar nomination (losing to "Saving Face") may have been a bit too much.

Sure, it's pretty obvious Western culture is different from Japan's. Just take a look around from any perspective.But where we diverge the most may flow not from outward discrepancies but from a philosophical point of view. While the Judeo-Christian perspective focuses on the choices of the individual, Buddhism encourages a holistic view. On 3/11 -- the day in 2011 that Japan's worst-ever earthquake struck, triggering a 110-foot tsunami -- nature unleashed a horrific fury, killing 20,000 people and laying waste to expanses of the eastern sea coast. Then, a month or two later, Japan's storied cherry blossoms started poking from their buds, offering succor and hope to a traumatized population.If "sakura" inundated in salt water can return to the business of life, then so can we, says a white-haired man who spends daylight with his wife, seated in front of their rubble-reduced home, and night hours asleep in a community center.This brief documentary begins with a shocking and lengthy stretch of home video that shows a vast black river of debris swallowing up frenzied scrambling dots (people) and all manner of man-made construction. The second half of the film focuses on the Japanese people's reverence for the delicate pink flower whose blossoming they mark in a 10-step progression. Death comes to the bloom within days of its birth, a call to love and revere the gifts of nature before they disappear. There is a transience in life that is always there, though we, especially here in the West, prefer not to look in that direction.There is an amazing sequence in this film in which a seller of cherry trees, whose family has been in the business for 16 generations, discusses the duality of nature. His wise words are as unexpected as they are eloquent.This film may make you cry. And wake you up.

The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom (2011)*** 1/2 (out of 4)Extremely well-made and sensitive look at a group of survivors of the March 11, 2011 tsunami that hit Japan. This documentary hears their stories of survival during the first half of the film and then the second half turns to the people's belief in the cherry blossom and what it meant to them after such a tragedy. The start of this movie contains some of the most dramatic footage you're going to see in a documentary or anything that Hollywood could create. The film starts as a group of people are on a hill looking over their town when they see the high tides starting to come in. The next couple minutes are just downright shocking in their destruction because from this one vantage point we see the entire town destroyed in the matter of seconds. This footage is just so shocking and heartbreaking because this isn't a Hollywood disaster movie but instead it's something real. There's even footage of people in the hit area trying to race for the hill with the water quickly working towards them. This footage here is just so heartbreaking and then we see that same spot a month after the disaster. This is a pretty hard subject to do a documentary on but director Lucy Walker does a terrific job at telling these sad stories and then giving the film a more uplifting beat as we hear the history of the cherry blossom and why they mean so much to the people. This is certainly one of the better documentaries out there and at 40-minutes it runs a very quick pace and really delivers all sorts of emotions.

We here at Indie Friendlie.com watched this incredible documentary from director Lucy Walker with great anticipation, and we were not disappointed.The film is heart-wrenching, difficult at times, but ultimately inspiring in its very intimate portraits of those whose lives were forever changed by the recent tsunami in Japan.Lucy Walker also co-directed the documentary "Waste Land", which was shot in Brooklyn and Brazil over 3 years. "The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom" and "Waste Land" show her ability to capture incredibly personal moments of courage in a vast landscape of adversity. In Japan, she did this with survivors of the tsunami, and in Brazil she did it again with that country's most impoverished. Awards and recognition for "The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom" are well-deserved. Definitely worth watching.