“The quiet earth where humans dwell.”
This is the meaning behind the title, Ainu Mosir, a phrase also used by the Indigenous Ainu people to refer to their homeland before it was colonized by Japan’s Meiji-era government in 1869 and renamed Hokkaido. The words set the tone for Takeshi Fukunaga’s sophomore feature of the same name, which casts a meditative look into what it means to continue sacred traditions that might be considered antiquated when laid in row with globalized values.
Buried in the snow of Japan’s northernmost island, the film revolves around Kanto (played by Kanto Shimokura), a newly fatherless teenage boy at odds with his roots in Ainu culture. As he drifts further away from his community in Akan village, Debo (played by Debo Akibe), a village elder with slightly dubious intentions, steps in as a de facto father figure. He gains Kanto’s trust and friendship by introducing him to Chibi (played by Chibi), a bear cub that he’s been secretly raising in the woods.
The two make a pact: Kanto will feed and care for the bear in exchange for keeping it a secret from the rest of the village. Only, there’s a catch: Debo has neglected to mention that he’s raising it as the vessel for a rare Iomante ceremony.
Typically involving the sacrifice, or “sending back” of a divine spirit to the heavenly realm, the Iomante ritual is founded in the belief that entities of the spirit world — better known as Kamuy — often visit the natural world, cloaked in the disguise of animals, plants, and natural phenomena, amongst other things. Usually performed with a brown bear cub, or a Blakiston’s fish owl, the offering is meant to symbolize a gesture of gratitude, allowing the spirit to return to its original home after being nurtured by humans for two years.
Similar to his 2015 debut feature about a Liberian rubber plantation worker’s immigration to the US, Out of My Hand, Fukunaga is able to represent the subject matter of Ainu Mosir respectfully, in large part due to the heavy lifting of a cast comprised almost entirely of non-actors from Akan. The choice immediately lends an air of realism to the story’s dramatized elements, working to strengthen the potency of Fukunaga’s creative liberties.
Accompanied by the muted, unimposing lens of Good Time cinematographer, Sean Price Williams, the images find a happy medium between documentary and drama-style camerawork. The lovely, deep, gentle blues of Hokkaido’s snowy reflections seep into the actors’ pores, however one of the film’s most poignant moments transcends that naturalistic beauty. In a sequence of swirling moral ambiguity near the film’s climax, we see Kanto through the tender honey of Chibi’s golden irises, as a surreal aura takes hold of the scene, similar to the likes of that which can be found in the tales of Ainu mythology.
Coming somewhat out of the blue, the reasoning behind Debo’s desire to hold an Iomante unfolds in a town hall meeting through a series of heavy, candid utterances about his own cultural identity: “I identify as Ainu, but I can’t seem to grasp what that means. Something’s missing.”
This sentiment, not so dissimilar from Kanto’s desire to move away from Akan, articulates part of the impact that globalized values have had on Debo’s connection to Ainu culture. For him, this Iomante is personal. It’s a route to spiritual and communal enrichment. It’s a rediscovery of something historical and distinctly Ainu, and in being so, a rebellion against modern uniformity.
Even so, Debo’s purposeful deception of Kanto feels unforgivable. He attempts to fill the empty space left behind by Kanto’s late father, for no reason other than to lure him back into the community he has been alienated from. He takes advantage of Kanto’s vulnerable state and manipulates their shared trust by way of his perceived seniority.
Ultimately fateful, Kanto’s juvenescence is the one thing maintaining the veil that so often, yet so inexplicably, conceals adult’s flaws — an illusion that seems to fall away once the maturation process into adulthood is complete.
Striking a balance between humans and nature is a theme to which filmic exploration is no stranger, and it is certainly omnipresent in Ainu Mosir. From First Reformed’s Ernst Toller, a Protestant minister desperately searching for a way to atone for humanity’s sins against the earth; to Miyazaki’s apocalyptic masterpiece, Princess Mononoke, when Lady Eboshi’s conquest of the Deer God results in cataclysmic environment death — finding that seemingly out of reach covenant of harmony between humans and nature is the undercurrent of this story, and it pulls Kanto and Debo into a whirlpool of ideological ambivalence.
What truly sets this film apart is the multidimensional conflict between Debo and Kanto, which provides a remarkable amount of insight into a number of issues. One of which is the universal notion of implicitly stated obedience to seniority that, as time goes on, often mutates into a catalyst for familial estrangement.
A co-production between Japan’s Booster Project and NYC’s Cineric Creative, the film is being distributed by Ava DuVernay’s ARRAY and will be available on Netflix on Nov. 17.
