Crows are an
ever present feature of life in Japan. They
are a nuisance to many city-dwellers with their loud caws and their habit of
riffling through garbage that has not been put under a protective net. At the same time, there is much to admire in
the crow. They are clever birds who
adapt well to new environments, from making
their nests out of wire coat hangers to placing
walnuts on the road so that they can be cracked open by cars running them
over.
Because
crows will feed on the carrion of animals, they have often been associated with
death in the myths and legends of many cultures. Their mysterious nature has also inspired
many great works of poetry and other literature. The corvid family appear frequently
in Shakespeare, not to mention great poetic works like Ted Hughes’s collection of poems Crow: From the Life and Songs of the Crow (1970), Edgar Allan Poe’s narrative poem “The Raven” (1845), Vachel Lindsay’s poem “Two Old Crows” (1917), and
Robert Frost’s “Dust of Snow”:
The way a
crow
Shook down
on me
The dust of
snow
From a
hemlock tree
Has given my
heart
A change of
mood
And saved
some part
Of a day I
had rued.
- Robert
Frost, New Hampshire,
1923
The young,
Osaka-based animation duo of Makiko
Sukikara (鋤柄真希子, b. 1982) and Kōhei
Matsumura (松村康平, b. 1980) were inspired by stories, both literary and
scientific, for their poetic animated short While
the Crow Weeps (カラスの涙 / Karasu no Namida, 2013). The
film first came to my attention when they won the New Face Award at the Japan
Media Arts Festival 2013. Jury
member Toshikatsu Wada (和田 敏克, b.
1966), of Kakio 24 Animation Studio and adjunct
professor at Tokyo
Zokei University, praised While the
Crow Weeps as “a powerful new work.
. . that depicts the grim reality of living in
the wild. The brilliant texture and the accuracy of the portrayal is
overwhelming, patiently depicting a cloudy sky at dawn, the thickness of a
mist, or how crows rise up one-by-one into the air. And there is no anthropomorphic
emotional interpretation whatsoever in the countenance of the crows. The
uniform inclusion of a sense of strain in this world, and living and dying in
it, is a single large idea, and the crows that live based on this are depicted
with majesty. We can expect much from artists who create this kind of self-
produced work.” (Source: j-mediaarts.jp)
Speaking to
Sukikara and Matsumura at Hiroshima 2014, where While the Crow Weeps screened as part of the showcase Japanese
Animation Today (現代日本のアニメーション), I learned about how the film was
made. Sukikara did the drawings,
animation, and direction while Matsumura wrote the screenplay, and did the cinematography
and editing. They worked in
collaboration with the experimental artist and composer Nobukazu Takemura (竹村延和, b. 1968), who is also a native
of Osaka, though he is currently based in Germany. Takemura was an inspired choice of collaborator
as he has experimented with his own original animations.
The film
begins with the caw of crows and the camera appears to push through heavy fog
and fronds of rice plants to settle on a large tree covered in crows. Images of the crows at rest on the tree are interspersed
with the skeletal form of one of their brethren on the ground. The tranquil scene comes to an end when one
of the crows lets off a loud caw and a spectacular overhead perspective shows
the crows flying away from the tree.
This is followed by a view from below as the crows circle above in the
cloudy sky.
A
naturalistic sequence transforms into an artistic one as the crows form an
unnatural circle and rotate in a formation that brings to mind a spinning Phenakistocope
– an early animation device. This sets up the dichotomy that evolves
throughout the film: naturalistic observations about the behaviour of crows are
interwoven with artistic interpretations of the bird. Realistic imagery of a cat with a dead crow
in its beak contrasts with surreal impressions of the spirit of a dead crow chasing
off the cat and unrealistic scenarios such as crows flying in an unlikely
formation like planes going to battle. In his
notes for the film, Matsumura writes of his fascination with cannibalism
and crows, and how it challenges human ethics.
Like many animals, crows are opportunistic feeders and in rare cases have been
known to even prey upon their own. With
such imagery, While the Crow Weeps is
at once a celebration of the beauty of nature while acknowledging its
savagery.
The
dissonance of Nobukazu Takemura’s soundtrack adds a sense of unease to the
atmosphere of the film. For me, the most
beautiful aspect While the Crow Weeps
is Makiko Sukikara’s artwork and animation.
Using a combination of techniques – sumi-e, watercolour, and cutouts –
on a 12-layers animation table, she has created some striking images. The beautiful but eerie opening sequence of
the crows on the tree has lingered in my memory since I screened the film.
Follow @sukimaky on twitter to learn
about future screenings of this animated short.
Animation
& Director: Makiko Sukikara
Photography & Writer: Kōhei Matsumura
Music:
Nobukazu Takemura