In A Humble Life (1997), Alexander Sokurov shows the daily life of an old lady who lives by herself in a village in the mountains of Nara prefecture, in Japan. Her time is mostly spent sewing mofuku, or mourning kimonos. Her house is not presented as a domestic, functional space, but rather as an outer layer that strengthens and protects the lonely woman. Indeed, the traditional wooden house serves all at once as protection, as a place of meditation and as a workshop. Alexander Sokurov enters into this simple, unornamented architecture and introduces it as a form of poetic expression: for the filmmaker, it seems as if the dwelling was a way of thinking existentially about space. The Japanese house is an empty but active home, a site favourable to both delight and prolonged enchantment.

The Spirit of the Japanese House

Late at night, clouds rush sideways in front of the camera, streaking before a mountain range. This image is followed by a static shot of a house, barely visible in the darkness. The director whispers calmly and solemnly: ‘I arrived at dusk. The sound of the wind and fatigue prevented me from falling asleep.’ Slowly, the camera inches closer to the house and comes inside. It lingers for a while on an oil lamp, then it examines from up close a hand stroking a tatami, while the sound of burning twigs and the chirp of crickets are heard. Later, Sokurov places his camera on the threshold of a sliding door, so as to bring together the inside and the outside as a continuous whole. Materials and fabrics are closely observed: packed-earth floors, the rush stems of the tatami. Slowly, the superimposed image of a Japanese-style room (washitsu), with its tatami flooring and rice paper (shouji) walls, appears. The audience can hear the sound of a wooden floor creaking, and one guesses that it is the house’s lone occupant walking about. The filmmaker seems to be listening intently to the nervous chatter of the various materials, as if to reveal the quiet, spiritual sobriety of the walls and floors of this Japanese house.