Avalanche

Your knowledge is thin like a piece of paper...

Avalanche does not involve snow and ice, but it does signify the disaster one arrogant man brings down upon himself.

Goro is the spoiled child of a rich family, self-centered, entitled, and thinks he is much smarter than he is. He's been married for a year to sweet, obedient, traditional Fukiko and he is already bored. Goro is in love with Yayoi and wants to divorce Fukiko to marry her. His father puts his foot down and tells him he has responsibilities as a married man to his wife and society. Yayoi, the object of his affection, wants to be with Goro yet also feels guilty. Goro has no such compassion for his wife or feelings of guilt. Like a petulant child Goro wants what he wants now without caring how his actions will affect others. Father and son continually argue about duty and desire.

Avalanche can be a difficult film to watch, regardless of how you feel about infidelity. Goro is a selfish protagonist with no redeeming qualities. Even if you start to feel sorry for his situation, by the end of the film, he will have wiped it all away in a particularly dark moment.

I've been conflicted on how to rate this film. It is well made. The scenes flow easily into one another. Unlike some older movies where the action takes place within a couple of sets and the characters are static, Avalanche's scenes are fluid. The characters hold conversations while walking in a forest, in town or naturally in the home. Conversations involving the father tend to be smart and on point more often than not as the father realizes how vacuously empty his son is of any morals. It is obvious the director is contrasting the old and the new as well. The house is Western in design and furnishings. Fukiko dresses as a traditional Japanese married woman, whereas the men and Yayoi are in Western clothes at all times. Father and son eat in a Western style restaurant. Two generations and two different cultural attitudes clash at every moment.

The problem I have with the movie if I try to view it as a character study is that none of the characters grows or have much depth to them. Fukiko is devoid of personality and obedient unto death. Goro thinks only of himself. The trigger for a disastrous emotional release occurs when his father tries to reign him in with the threat of being disowned. As Goro's father tells him, he wouldn't go down this path if he didn't have the cushion of a wealthy family to land and rely on. Yayoi is caught up in Goro's avalanche, unable to extricate herself even though she is aware the price to be paid in society for their actions. Yet even she begins to believe Goro that to be happy one has to ignore the pain it causes others. Before the film ends, Goro steps beyond being merely disdainful and pitiless, to evil. At that point the film falters as it does not bring about a satisfactory or even comprehensible ending. With all the dialogue and inner thoughts this film encompassed, it lacked the few sentences which might have made the last actions understandable to the character and the audience.

The father compared Goro's thoughts to being as thin as paper. Too often the characters came across thinly drawn as well. In the end, it was hard to care about any of the main players. Whether motivated by love or desire, their actions or inactions brought down an avalanche upon them, leaving none of them unscathed or particularly sympathetic. In the end, Avalanche plummeted into a crevice with me, offering neither character development nor emotional release.

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