Misako writes film narration for the sight impaired. This involves auditioning the narration to groups of the target audience. Responses range from the unhelpfully polite to the confrontingly blunt. The message is that she is being too flowery. By venturing outside of flat descriptions she is curbing their imagination and they lose touch with the conjured image and the experience becomes confusing.One of the most outspoken of the test group had been a career photographer. He feels an acute pain at the irreversible loss of his connection to his art. Misako happens upon him in a park, cradling a beautiful old Rolliflex camera taking what we see are images from his bleached remaining vision. At first she recoils from him, quietly making her exit but is so haunted by his story that she is compelled toward him. He doesn't make this easy. He describes his camera as his heart and cannot consider the loss of its use without dread. Her job will need a lot of tiny steps. Meanwhile, the draft of the narration continues with Misako gaining an understanding of the balance necessary between practicality and elegance which bids a greater understanding of what the experience is to them.
This is not a tale of walking a mile in someone else's shoes but of plummeting into the cavern of alien values and finding one's own indistinguishable. Poignantly, this film is told in scenes of unerring beauty (not least of which is the aching beauty of Ayame Misaki in the lead role) so that we the sighted are also simultaneously confronted and seduced. And if that ain't what cinema is all about ....
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