4.5/5
Lucille Carra’s The Inland Sea is a surprisingly lovely and deeply meditative piece of creative nonfiction. Following a the journey through Japan’s inland sea that film scholar Donald Richie took in 1971, the film is part travelogue, part meditation on what it means to be human. It’s refreshing to see a Westerner with such rigid ideas of what authentic Japanese culture looks like confront his own colonialist mindset. Instead of seeking some romanticized (and exoticized) version of authentic Japanese people, Richie must reflect on how he can be authentic and truly himself as he lives as a foreigner, as the other. It’s a short film, but lovely and unexpectedly moving.
This capsule review was generously sponsored by Nick Evert.
