Monday, July 2, 2001

I watched all 57 minutes of Spring and Chaos last night, and as a result I paced the floor of my bedroom until 3:00 a.m. as my mind digested what I’d seen.

Spring and Chaos is quite hard to define. It’s about Kenji Miyazawa, one of Japan’s greatest poets. He lived an exuberant but out-of-the-way life, and his poetry and writings received very little attention until after his death. Spring and Chaos isn’t exactly a biography, though the viewer is treated to major events in Miyazawa’s life. There’s no real story, either, at least not in the traditional sense.

This is the presentation of a person. More than anything else, I think, Spring and Chaos tries to get across to the audience who Kenji Miyazawa really was; writer, idealist, teacher, and humanist. It tries to show you what Miyazawa had to deal with in his life, what he saw and how he felt.

As I’m sure you have figured out by now, I was enthralled by the beautiful imagery and feelings present in this little film. Watching Spring and Chaos is one of those full-scale Experiences, and as a result are very difficult to define.

It made me think about Wine, and the fact that I haven’t really been thinking about it much lately. Watching Spring and Chaos has inspired me to work at building that dream again. I’m going to e-mail the character designer tonight to see how he’s doing, and in general try to pull the pre-production together in my mind.