Deep in the Valley

Running time: 107 mins

In one of the oldest neighborhoods of Tokyo, a secret waits to be discovered?

The Yanaka neighborhood of Tokyo is a valley of ancient monasteries and quiet parks pervaded by history. Here once stood the famous Five-Story Pagoda, which burned to the ground in 1957. Today, a group of young people tries to find filmed records of the past, their grail being footage of the pagoda?s burning.

This quietly beautiful film exemplifies the duality of yin and yang: set in both the present and the past (when the revolutionary act of a young architect breaks with tradition and creates a masterpiece that itself becomes tradition), it is both documentary and fiction; color and black-white; traditional and innovative; poetic and mundane. Even reality and magic come into play. It is a love song to the past, sung by the present. It is the portrait of a neighborhood and a revelation of the historic soul of Japan.

? Charlie Cockey