The following article is about a animated short film. If you have not watched the film I highly recommend that you take the five minutes to do so. The film can be found here.
There’s something almost voyeuristic about watching a short film like Kanamewo. It’s almost as though you’re watch the innermost emotions of its creator splayed out before you. Despite having no dialogue Kanamewo is able to convey so much, both emotionally and thematically.
Kanamewo is a 2015 animated short film by the independent Japanese animator Rapparu. It follows a young woman who finds a sickly tree spirit. She takes the spirit into her care, nurturing it back to health, and eventually falling in love with it. However, the spirit begins to fall ill again, and soon after passes away. The woman takes the spirit and buries it near a lake. One day, she returns to find that a tree has grown in that spot.
Because of it’s vague presentation, Kanamewo leaves itself open to many interpretations. The short is presented with no dialogue or no ambient sounds. The only sound comes from the backing music, the song Lust for Summer Blues by indie post-rock band Adustam. Despite this simplicity, there’s a palpable emotional depth that one can feel while watching Kanamewo. It’s a film that says a lot while not actually saying anything in a literal sense.
One interpretation is an allegorical representation of humanity’s relationship with nature. At the beginning of the film, we see the destruction of nature, an old shrine in the middle of a big city being torn down. This can be taken to represent how humanity has progressed beyond needing spiritual representation for nature. The viewer sees the manifestation of nature, the tree spirit, sickly and laying in the rain. The woman can be viewed as both an individual and as a representation for humanity as a whole. As an individual, she saw the dying spirit and took it in, caring for it and trying to “fix” it. However, as a representation for humanity, she took the spirit and tried to shape it to suit her own needs, exposing it to vice. By trying to make it into something that it’s not, the spirit is drained and weakened, eventually bringing about its demise. This is something that’s also represented in the colour palette of the film, the city shouts being bleak, drab, and muted while nature shots are bright, vibrant and colourful.
That’s not to imply that this relationship is parasitic. The film clearly depicts it as a mutual affection. There’s a visceral grief that the viewer shares with the woman at the end of the film. Perhaps then, Kanamewo can be interpreted as a meditation on loss. It works as a representation of how it feels to lose something that one cares about more than anything. There’s a fondness for the happiness shared with another individual and an all-consuming grief when that individual is gone.
Kanamewo can also be interpreted as an allegory for depression. If the tree spirit is taken as a metaphor for depression, we see the journey of the woman as she works through it. She accepts it as part of her life, and it slowly becomes a greater and greater part of her life. This continues until it hits a point of dependence. As the depression fades away, the woman is forced to bury it and move on, the tree at the end of the film representing a hopeful and optimistic view of the future. This is also something that can be seen in the colour palette of the film. At the start the film is drab and colourless, but at the end the film is bright and full of colour representing the journey through depression.
Ultimately, Kanamewo can be interpreted as moving on from something. It is a meditation on love and loss and, eventually, acceptance. Regardless of what that thing might be, Kanamewo, presents a deeply emotional look at what it means to deal with the pain of losing something that one loves and eventually accepting that pain and moving beyond it, looking towards the hope of a brighter future.
Joel Vs Film 