“The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom”: A Day of Carnage
Nominated for a Best Documentary Academy Award this year “The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom” is also a powerful narrative as vibrant as any dramatic cinema, an extraordinary, mesmerizing tribute to the resilience of human nature. More than an epitaph of mourning and loss, this film interviews ordinary residents whose philosophical attitudes toward the day of carnage are not easily dismissed. Their amazing faces humanize this catastrophe of nature.
The ten-minutes of home-video taken from a hill overlooking the explosive black waves surging towards the coastline of Sendai will...