Films that focus on death, and particularly documentaries that record the last days of individuals are not exactly a trend, with the topic always considered alienating if not appalling. While Wang Bing, in his “Mrs Fang”, presented the concept with a dark/brutal realism Haruyo Kato, chooses a much “brighter” approach to the final days of her mother, in a film whose obvious purpose was to function as a kind of catharsis, but ends up being so much more.
“The Cheese and the Worms” is screening for free at DAFilms as part of the “Made in Japan, Yamagata 1989 – 2021” program
According to the director's statement, one day, she was suddenly informed that her mother had one or two years to live. She survived for a bit more than that, and in her third year of illness, Haruyo Kato bought a small video camera, thinking that her mother would recover, and she could record the miracle. In that fashion, she started recording the everyday life in their house, including their work in the fields and their domestic situation, which also includes the director's elderly grandmother and her brother's family next door. These scenes are juxtaposed with the ones the patient spends at the hospital, while the documentary is split into chapters whose titles point to some of the food products the family churns out.
The documentary unfolds much like a home video in that fashion, with the director actually being an integral part of the proceedings, frequently interacting with her subjects. What is impressive, however, is how all aspects of life are presented in the film, since the videos include the baby of Kato's brother, the two siblings, her mother, and her elderly grandmother, in a fashion that could be perceived as a record of the cycle of life.
The juxtaposition of scenes in the house, the fields, and the hospital also works quite well for the narrative, with each one also functioning as a kind of relief from the other, while Kato keeps the whole thing light, not focusing intently on the inevitable, with her mother's overall attitude helping the most in that regard and the laughters being much more than the cries in the movie.
At the same time, however, the whole narrative, even when the inevitable becomes evident, ends up being somewhat tedious and repetitive, with the fact that the documentary is quite personal for the filmmaker becoming rather evident after a fashion, as it is difficult to empathize with the “protagonists”. The part about the food products helps somewhat, with Kato's editing placing these scenes ideally, but at the same time, at 98 minutes, the whole endeavour definitely overextends its welcome. Furthermore, 16 years after its initial release, the movie shows its age, with the quality of the visuals not helping at all in that regard.
“The Cheese and the Worms” is not exactly a bad film, and its realism, sentiment, and video-chronicle approach work quite well on occasion. However, in the end, and particularly nowadays, it has also lost its urgency almost completely, resulting in a title that essentially addresses only extreme film buffs.
