by Aldo Garcia
Around the film’s midpoint, Kazue Miyazaki improvises a poem on the spot. Based only on an abstract title she previously made up, she takes a small moment to collect herself, turns on her recorder, and distills every pain she ever felt in under five minutes. It is dense, fitting to a life as long and tumultuous as hers. It is not, however, pessimistic. As severe as her words become, it feels like a declaration of her existence in the face of everything she endured. The acceptance of an imperfect yet purposefully-lived life, refusing to give in to the darkness.
Being Kazue is screening at Nippon Connection
“Being Kazue” is aptly titled this way. More than about the town it carefully historicizes, the country’s culture which created it, or the many resilient people she met along the way, this is a documentary about her. The tale of a leprosy survivor who lived more than eighty years in a sanatorium on the island of Nagashima, Japan. A recording of everything she wanted for her life, the moments of great beauty and hardship she experienced, the people who molded her, and perhaps more than anything, all that led her to write that poem in the first place.
Along with her husband, Takayuki Miyazaki, the film consists of a series of vignettes following Kazue’s daily life while connecting it to her past. From her early life in pre-war Japan and the many scars she gained on the way (literally and figuratively), to her present life and the unwavering resolve that made her want to document herself in the first place.
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As the documentary progresses, the audience learns a lot about her very quickly: she is a writer, passionate about reading and conveying her feelings. She is strong-willed, unashamed of her condition, and seeking to show herself whole for more people to gain awareness and, more importantly, understanding. Other things are subtler, like, for instance, the fact that she loves sports drinks. She loves her husband even though they barely talk. She loves to look at landscapes in the open. She hates pity. She is not that sociable, yet she cares for the people around her.
Director Hiroko Kumagai presents her story with empathetic transparency, never falling into sensationalism or exploitation. With over fifty TV commercials of experience (from “Afghan Spring” in 1989, to “Echoes From the Miike Mine” in 2006), her vision is as naturally precise as it is diligently spontaneous. It never shies away from recording the reality of their conditions, especially how the most mundane activities are inaccessible to them in fundamental ways because of the damage leprosy has done to their bodies.
Most importantly, Kumagai never takes away their dignity in any way. Like any documentary, this one walks the very thin line between being objective and feeling personal to the audience. Unlike a lot of them, “Being Kazue” is quite comfortable with zig-zagging every now and then between the two. Courtesy of cinematographer Hiroki Nakajima, the camera is always close to the couple, attentive to every action they take with the respect they need to never fall into pity. The mostly hand-held frame is always moving alongside its subjects, juxtaposed with the occasional “pillow” shots so distinctive of Japanese cinema to keep the audience always in the present tense of its world.
The pacing greatly benefits this too, with the editing carefully weaving the many facets and phases of the poet as it follows her memories as she experiences her life backwards while moving forward. The result is a surprisingly robust flow that, while never getting completely meditative, always leaves room for the audience to bask in the particular feelings each scene wants to convey. Accompanied by the sparse yet poignant music of composer Kyoko Kuroda, the documentary seeks to accentuate Kazue’s feelings alongside its audience.
Transparency, in this sense, is not necessarily the main goal of the film. Like the poem Kazue writes halfway through the film, the goal is to declare oneself while accompanying oneself.
Ironically, “Being Kazue” still moves twenty-four frames at a time, just like most other movies. Yet inside these frames, a life is seeking to be portrayed. Like Kazue’s poem, the seeking leads the documentary (and her) to find a polished, warm mirror on the other side. A portrait of a person willing to connect on the other side. The record of someone who felt like most others. An invitation for people to never ignore their reflection ever again.
