I've always loved documentary portrayal, in fiction films, of craft: the papermaking in Inugami, the embroidery in Sequins (Brodeuses), Maki's print work in Turn (Taan), the book preservation lore that creeps into Lie Lie Lie and La Meglio gioventù, even the studiously intricate binding in Undo. So simple a thing as sweeping, or raking, will do, if a mind is shown at work. I don't sit watching how-to channels, this-old-house kind of thing. It's not that. Fiction is absolutely necessary to whatever I mean. Not craft, but the portrayal of craft gets to me. The sweet spot's on a fringe, a netherworld of fiction, a place where fiction's just heightened reality but where reality, unassisted, would appear insignificant or insufficient.
Rain Is Falling portrays no particular craft. It begins with a young girl's brief journey, a winding workaday path home. Just as she steps inside to check her ailing, perhaps unconscious mother, serious rain begins to fall. The map of her path home gives way to the map of a room. As water threads along interior beams, she rushes to and fro placing bowls under drips. When one stream threatens to pool and fall right onto her mother's face, she grabs a glass and manages to catch the first drop, but the rain goes on. Drips come too fast. The glass is going to fill and spill. There's no way to switch it for another.
With poetic simplicity, she solves the problem.
Rain Is Falling portrays no particular craft. It begins with a young girl's brief journey, a winding workaday path home. Just as she steps inside to check her ailing, perhaps unconscious mother, serious rain begins to fall. The map of her path home gives way to the map of a room. As water threads along interior beams, she rushes to and fro placing bowls under drips. When one stream threatens to pool and fall right onto her mother's face, she grabs a glass and manages to catch the first drop, but the rain goes on. Drips come too fast. The glass is going to fill and spill. There's no way to switch it for another.
With poetic simplicity, she solves the problem.
