Ascent, Descent

In the past two days, I've discovered that a person can get a lot of reading done in a hospital garden. Apart from quantities of birds and flowers, there are no distractions, and I relished the quiet, green space, four levels up from the ground. Behind me rose the Marriot Hotel, and around it, I imagined, surged the constant current of shoppers and tourists, but I saw and heard none of it as I sat reading in the garden.

Still, the hospital is no cheery place, certainly not when the fourth floor is also home to the children's ward. The novel kept my spirits elevated, and so did the memory of an animated short film that I saw over the weekend.

"La Maison en Petits Cubes" (The House of Small Cubes) by Kunio Kato, won the Oscar for Best Animated Short Film last night. And it deserved to. Of the five nominated short films, I saw three. The Russian entry, "Lavatory Lovestory," was sweet and delightful, and "Oktapodi," cute and amusing. But it was the Japanese "La Maison en Petits Cubes" that took my breath away.

An old man lives in a tiny room that we soon realize is one of many that he has built throughout his life, each cube of a room resting atop the previous one. It's some time in the future, when most of the world is submerged and the sea level continues to rise. The short film doesn't dwell on this; instead, it reveals the stages of the man's life, the memories enclosed within each cube.

These 12 minutes of melancholic wonder remind me of Hayao Miyazaki's "Castle in the Sky," particularly the apocalyptic motif of submerged worlds (on the island in the sky, the children find ponds with tiny buildings - whole worlds - within the waters). Japanese artist Inoue Naohisa's paintings also feature similar images. All three have different styles, but their creations suggest a distinctly Japanese sensibility, one that values nostalgia - not maudlin or mawkish but poetic and arresting in all its serenity.

The short film also reminded me of a young man in Argentina who told me he wanted to build his own house one day and live in it with the girl he loved, whoever she might be. I'd never met anyone who had a dream like this, certainly not in this day, and his declaration took me by surprise. And as I watched "La Maison en Petit Cubes," I remembered something else he had said - that he was wistful about much of his past but never regretful. Years from now, if we're still friends, I hope he'll be telling me a story much like this one.

Posted by Monoceros at February 24, 2009 12:23 AM