Heaven's Story Director: Zeze Takahisa Japan 2010 Cast: Tsuruoka Moeki (Sato), Hasegawa Tomoharu (Tomoki), Oshinari Shugo (Mitsuo), Murakami Jun (Kajima), Yamasaki Hako (Kyoko) Nine episodes, a running time of four and a half hours, a dozen main characters, a plot spanning nine years.A survival story, of those who have lost everybody. The agony of bereavement by murder. "The man I wanted killed died before I had the chance."Lives connected by murder and loss. "There are events in life that are quickly forgotten by those who aren't involved, but for those involved they never come to an end.""Eight-year-old Sato, whose family was wiped out by a psychopath who then went on to kill himself, learns by chance of a man who has sworn to take revenge on the man who murdered his wife and daughter. For eight long years she waits in vain for him to keep his promise, then takes the initiative herself, setting in motion a chain of tragic events that gradually plunges everyone involved into misery."A policeman who becomes a contract killer to support the family of a man whom he killed in self-defense; a partially deaf girl in a rock band; a woman with early-onset Alzheimer's who adopts a murderer who ends up loving her past death."I want to be remembered by the unborn." The loss of memory, of one's self."When your family is murdered, aren't you entitled to happiness?"Tears and pee. The dead keep watch.

Pink was nothing is this movie, so don't get excited.Heaven's Story goes for the big themes that move us, life, death, revenge, even love, in an odd non-romantic way. Where others would have taken two hours to tell the story, he took us through four and a half hours (I have been thinking that it can be considered a quality that three quarters of the audience stayed until the very end).The story picks up after two homicides that interrupt two very different families which the survivors' search for revenge connects.The human stands in the very center of this movie. The camera hardly ever leaves the characters alone. It doesn't shy away from their anger and despair (maybe a bit less shouting would have worked as well). The film follows the characters in their search "to be remembered by the unborn", as one of the murderers explains why he has killed. The individual is contrasted only by the anonymous city suburbs full of building blocks, just a couple of people, out of millions and millions. And the landscapes, the ocean, heaven, the mountains, in their four seasons. The camera-work is outstanding, always focusing on the characters, and how they fit, or rather, how they not fit in their environment.One of the characters asks: "Take me some place that surprises me and I let you go." He takes her to the beach where she can finally let out her anger and frustration. They are all outsiders, without a social life. Yet they go on, in search of being remembered by someone, anyone.