Review of “The Night of Taneyamagahara” (2006)
Farmers talk about the coming morning around a campfire on northern Honshū. The youngest of them dreams about his plan to buy some land for making and selling charcoal. In his dream, the leaves ask him not to cut down the trees.
Georgic montage of mostly still images to words based on a story by Miyazawa Kenji and read entirely in dialect, quite different from standard Japanese. Directed by Oga Kazuo, Ghibli’s most famous background artist. Very slow, anthropomorphizing, and lacking in focus. The meditative windfalls are not quite there.