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\u00a92020 Laboratory X, Inc<\/p>\n
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\u201cZero\u201d is the ninth in a series of \u201cobservational documentaries\u201d based on such unique principles as \u201cno research,\u201d \u201cno scripts,\u201d and \u201croll the camera yourself,\u201d which the director collectively refers to as the \u201c10 commandments of observational filmmaking.\u201d The movie is set at the Chorale Okayama mental clinic that also provided the setting for \u201cMental\u201d (2008), the second volume in the series. Upon hearing that the clinic\u2019s head, Dr. Masatomo Yamamoto was going to retire, Soda took his camera, traveled to Okayama, and immediately started shooting. Protagonist in the first half of the resulting movie is Dr. Yamamoto prior to retirement, and in the second half, the now retired doctor is joined by his wife Yoshiko. Ever since meeting Dr. Yamamoto for the first time during the making of \u201cMental\u201d ten years ago, Soda and producer Kiyoko Kashiwagi had agreed that they wanted to make a documentary movie about him someday. There must be something that particularly fascinated the two of them, and that has to be Dr. Yamamoto\u2019s special kind of personal magnetism. During the making of \u201cMental,\u201d there were some problems related to the patients\u2019 privacy, but rather than intervening and prohibiting the shooting, Dr. Yamamoto wholeheartedly encouraged the team to \u201cget over it with everyone\u2019s support.\u201d That brave decision reflects exactly the progressive mindset of psychiatric medical care. \u201cI never stopped wondering what kind of person he is though,\u201d Soda sums up his growing interest in Dr. Yamamoto. At an occasion that couldn\u2019t have been better timed, he paid the doctor another visit and realized his idea of a movie about him.<\/p>\n
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\u00a92020 Laboratory X, Inc<\/p>\n
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Regarding the meaning of the \u201czero\u201d in the title, Dr. Yamamoto refers to that at the beginning of the movie, when he talks about \u201cresetting oneself to zero,\u201d and is then asked by a patient what \u201cresetting oneself to zero\u201d means. In a recent interview via Skype, Soda shared his insight regarding that phrase as \u201can expression that is elemental for all people, including patients at the clinic, (Dr. Yamamoto\u2019s wife) Yoshiko, or even the doctor himself.\u201d When I casually asked him, \u201cCould it be that it actually had the strongest repercussions on yourself?\u201d he replied, \u201cWell, maybe that\u2019s true\u2026\u201d It is in the second part of the movie, that the true meaning behind this is revealed. Once the clinic is left behind, the camera\u2019s focus shifts to the retired Dr. Yamamoto, a man whose only interest has been his work. Soda, himself a self-confessed \u201cworkaholic,\u201d reacts sensitively and empathetically, until he notices something of enormous importance: the role of his own wife and producer, Kiyoko Kashiwagi, as a supporter of the \u201cObservational Filmmaking\u201d series. Fans of his Soda\u2019s work know Kashiwagi as a character that occasionally gets involved with some rather exquisite comment that, along with the ubiquitous cats, add a bit of humor and smoothness. Soda\u2019s movies are at once also Kashiwagi\u2019s movies, and in a quite unexpected way, here they reveal the evident when they illustrate how Yamamoto\u2019s wife Yoshiko took charge of domestic affairs, and thereby gave the doctor the freedom to devote himself to psychiatric healthcare.<\/p>\n
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\u00a92020 Laboratory X, Inc<\/p>\n
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While filming both of them, the camera increasingly focuses on Yoshiko, as Soda seems to get more and more captivated by her presence. Interspersed with flashback images that Soda had shot of Yoshiko ten years earlier, the portrait that Soda creates of Yoshiko shows a different person from the Yoshiko who now suffers from dementia. Without thinking much, I said something about the cruelty of the way time passes to Soda, whereupon he replied, \u201cExactly, it\u2019s just \u2018cruel\u2019 how people get old and die, and none of us can escape that. I think that\u2019s what causes humans the greatest \u2018pain,\u2019 and it\u2019s the biggest topic in life.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Two silhouettes cuddle together as they walk up a hill to the graveyard. It\u2019s an overwhelming scene, during the shooting of which Soda by his own account \u201cgot totally filled with emotion.\u201d It\u2019s a moment of venerableness, and of sadness. As if it were a condensation of life itself. Soda introduces \u201cZero\u201d as a work that \u201caccidentally turned out as an \u2018innocent love story\u2019 kind of movie,\u201d and indeed, it is a gently touching documentary (which was awarded Ecumenical Jury Prize at the Berlin International Film Festival\u2019s Berlinale Forum 2020). You can watch it in the Temporary Cinema now, and I hope you will soon have the chance to go and see it on the big screen as well.<\/p>\n
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\u2015\u2015\u2015<\/p>\n
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Interview with Kazuhiro Soda and producer Kiyoko Kashiwagi (Japanese\u00a0only)<\/p>\n