The Inland Sea

Filmmaker Lucille Carra's 1991 well-regarded but seldom seen short feature—inspired by film scholar and Japanophile Donald Richie’s titular 1971 book—serves up a selective tour of seaside communities along the Sea of Japan, far from the Tokyo-megapolis area. The Inland Sea becomes a search for the "real" Japan amidst Western influences and modernization. Richie narrates but remains largely off-camera, while the lens finds Shinto shrines (and a monk bemoaning that "big machines" are more likely to tear his temple down and rebuild rather than just fix the ancient roof tiles at issue), a modern leper colony amidst placid Zen peace and beauty, coffee shops filled with the latest English-language magazine, and a WWII widow who is doggedly persevering by delivering newspapers. Richie, who died in 2013, said that he considered his book a form of epistolary novel rather than a nonfiction travelogue. Extras include interviews/conversations with filmmaker Paul Schrader, cultural critic Ian Buruma, and Carra, remembering Richie (also appearing here in a 1991 interview) as a cultured bisexual eager to escape his stultifying Ohio hometown, who joined the many Westerners harboring a fascination with the Far East. Carra herself says her models for the film were early U.K. documentaries, and she deliberately eschewed fancy editing or extravagant camerawork. Recommended. Aud: C, P. (C. Cassady)