“Perfection,” said the philosopher Theodor W. Adorno, “is defined by not being able to be defined.” In truth, the same thing happens to beauty. For some reason, perfect overwhelms. It’s scary. And hence the impossibility of naming it, of making something that lacks errors part of us. Among the Navajo Indians, it is said, a fabric should never be perfect. A thread must be left loose so that the soul of the weaver is not imprisoned in its work. The last film in competition is a good example of what a Navajo Indian would never do. It has an explanation. ‘Great Absence’, of Kei Chika-Ura, It’s Japanese.
The official competition saw fit to end and it did so in the same tone that has taken place since the first day: without major errors (we will not say perfect), but without any memorable successes. There have been no great occasions to tear one’s clothes and bring out the extremely offended critic that we all carry inside, but neither has there been the other one, who runs to get on his knees to be the first to point out the chosen one. ‘Great absence’, Consequently, it is a film in which it is practically impossible to point out a mistake. Everything runs with admirable precision according to the very complex structure that it proposes. And yet, the film is presented with a pomposity and even petulance that it is difficult to take its side. If Chika-Ura were Navajo right now we would be extricating him from his tight tapestry.
The story is told of an actor estranged from his father, a university professor, since he abandoned his mother 20 years ago. Until one day he receives a call from the police. The old professor suffers from dementia and there is no way to piece together what has happened all this time: where is his second wife? Why did she destroy the family without giving an explanation? The father, who is given life by an exceptional Tatsuya Fuji, He speaks, but in the confused chatter everything imagined, everything suffered and, deep down, everything experienced is mixed. The son must organize the pieces of his father’s life, which, in effect, are also his own.
Kei Chika-Ura composes a drama as if it were a ‘thriller‘ with the soul of a puzzle and a labyrinth structure. There is no choice but to surrender to the admirable construct that the director builds around a plot that goes back and forth from the past to the present with a love diary as a witness to everything. As it advances ‘Great Absence’, Each of the absences and even atrocities that have marked the protagonist’s life acquire a new light and, in the process, a necessary forgiveness. The result is a film as prodigious as it is icy, elegant and perfect; so aware of himself and his importance that there is no way to fall in love. Never before has an error been so missed, no matter how small, to, as Adorno would say, define what otherwise seems indefinable. Who was Navajo.