Do we feel uncomfortable with intimacy

Naomi Kawase’s Tarachime offers us the question of intimacy, more precisely, how uncomfortable the sight of intimacy might make us.

Naomi Kawase’s Tarachime (Birth/Mother) deals with what can be described as her way of coming to terms with the life and death of Uno Kawase, her grandmother/foster mother, and eventually the birth of her child. The film itself, mostly providing snippets of the later stages of her grandmother’s life can be read and understood from multiple points of purpose from the filmmaker. But however it is read, the film renders itself to be a very intimate, and uncomfortably bare look at her relation and understanding of her grandmother’s existence.

The feeling of being uncomfortable, however, to me, offers a sense of authenticity to the film as well. Infact it can be questioned whether the need for comfort should even arise in a film that is intimate, if it infact is, truly intimate. And it is through this sense that Naomi navigates her own self to come to terms with the past and the present in relation to her grandmother. The interrogation with her, which can be felt as a constant dig at the past where the grandmother is visibly struggling to hold a conversation, while being uncomfortable to watch, also offers the character of the grandmother, a sense of balance. Naomi’s film does not offer a character that is good in all aspects, that is caring and kind throughout her life. Instead, we get someone who was rather ignorant to a young Naomi’s emotion and is currently in denial of her doings. The denial offers a raw response from both of them in the conversation.

Despite Naomi herself not being in front of the camera for almost the entirety of the film, perhaps what strikes me the most is her very presence carrying the film throughout. The film at no point in its runtime offers a rational or objective documentation or observation of the grandmother or the newborn child. Instead it offers a view that is at times, a very emotionally troubled Naomi looking at her grandmother and at other times a loving daughter understanding the grandmother’s life as she enters motherhood herself. That being said, it is only possible that one might view the film with a split mind themselves as I

found myself questioning the heart with which she was able to record some of the moments in the film, and perhaps the strength with which she decided to show it on a medium that is beyond her life.

The film addresses her own childhood as well while going into the life and eventual demise of the grandmother. A poetic interpretation is derived in the edit with the final moments of the film showing the birth of her own child and the death of her mother, and on some level the mother in the film from that point onwards becoming Naomi herself. The moment where she becomes a mother, the childbirth itself has been shown on film but with no audio. While the lack of audio makes these moments special where the audience watches life beginning in front of them without a blink or a pause, the purpose behind the audio being cut could be questioned itself. The strong, sometimes cold Naomi’s possible screams during the delivery were never heard by us the audience during this part of the film. Instead, the newborn’s cry is what we hear after the silence.

Several other instances in the film makes us feel and question the presence of the filmmaker. Her actions or lack thereof off screen, provides context to who she is and what her relation is to the actions seen on screen. And it goes both ways. The grandmother or the child reacts a certain way to Naomi, not to their surroundings as such. It is Naomi’s presence there that makes them do things. For example, the entire sequence of the grandmother apologizing after her denial and then later on writing her an apology stems from her interaction with the filmmaker, and not her daily life as such. These interventions are what

makes the scenes in the film happen on one hand. But on the other hand a lack of intervention also leads to certain scenes. When her child is playing with the film camera and unpacking the reel from it, the lack of intervention from Naomi, offers us a view of what the mother child relation must be like. This moment , to Naomi, is much more important than the perhaps expensive reel of film, the child is playing with. And this is felt throughout the film. It’s in the moments for her. Moments of her life and the life of the ones around her that seem to run by, that she seems to be ready to capture as they do. One could see it as a

desperation to capture every single moment in her life on camera, which would make her recording the ambulance in which her grandmother is being taken to the hospital seem less cold, as it comes from a sense of desperation to hold these moments forever to see. But Naomi also offers a sense of value that she gives the medium of filmmaking over her life as well. It is not desperation when we understand how truly powerful these memories are on film. This value she so clearly has for filmmaking makes us, the audience, question and understand the medium itself in a much deeper level as well. It then gives us a chance to question what kind of memories do we exactly want to hold on to. Would we , if given a chance, hold onto the uncomfortable moments and conversations in our lives that Naomi seems to be capable of doing. Or would we look back at our lives only to see the good bits. Do we associate memories with good memories for a reason or do we use the process of memory making only to feel good. If so in doing so, are we cutting off a sense of truth from

moments and memories, and as a filmmaker , would that be ethical in telling true stories.

Regardless of what the response might be to the intimacy that is portrayed on whichever scale of comfort it can be perceived in, the fact that the grandmother, who beyond her lifetime, remains the topic of discussion and observation in words and in vocals, in what I myself write today, perhaps justifies the power of the medium in immortalizing the ones we consider worthy.