Remembering Every Night

Remembering Every Night is an ethereal experience that shouldn’t be missed. It reminds viewers that cinema is a visual art first and foremost and that the composition of the frame and movements within it often speak much louder than words ever can.

It’s as minimal as a drama can get, softening the highs and lows of narrative into a meditation on memory, purpose and recreation. Don’t be put off by its ambling form, for its function effectively probes political topics behind a gauze of cinematic serenity.

There may be a subtle melancholy to the three overlapping character studies in Kiyohara’s film, but watching it was one of the more soothing cinematic experiences I’ve had this year precisely from its sense of place, examining how this location proves surprisingly fruitful in providing life’s simplest pleasures to those who live there.

The film is a gentle evocation of contemporary Japanese life in its pleasures and frustrations.

Ghosts linger, cameras linger. This is pensive, slow-slow cinema, like Bela Tarr with color but less compositional heft or, sometimes, clarity.