Halving The Bones
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''Halving the Bones'' is a documentary written, produced, and directed by author
Ruth Ozeki Ruth Ozeki is an American-Canadian author, filmmaker and Zen Buddhist priest. Her books and films, including the novels '' My Year of Meats'' (1998), '' All Over Creation'' (2003), '' A Tale for the Time Being'' (2013), and '' The Book of Form ...
. The film is shot in color/black-and-white and runs 70 minutes in length. The film premiered in 1995 in film festivals such as the Sundance Film Festival,
San Francisco Asian American Film Festival CAAMFest, known prior to 2013 as the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival (SFIAAFF), is presented every March in the San Francisco Bay Area in the United States as the nation’s largest showcase for new Asian American and Asia ...
, and the
Margaret Mead Film Festival The Margaret Mead Film Festival is an annual film festival held at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. It is the longest-running, premiere showcase for international documentaries in the United States, encompassing a broad spe ...
. Ozeki's film has been awarded the International Documentary Association Distinguished Achievement Award, the Kodak Award for Creative Cinematography, and the San Francisco International Film Festival Certificate of Merit.


Synopsis

Narrator Ruth Ozeki explains that she had attended her Japanese maternal grandmother's funeral in
Tokyo Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and List of cities in Japan, largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, ...
five years prior to the events depicted in the documentary. In Japan, when someone is
cremated Cremation is a method of final disposition of a dead body through burning. Cremation may serve as a funeral or post-funeral rite and as an alternative to burial. In some countries, including India and Nepal, cremation on an open-air pyre i ...
, their bones are not reduced to ash. Instead, half are preserved and split between the descendants. The rest of the bones are buried in a cemetery. Ruth is given a fragment of skull, a small part of a rib, and an unidentified bone to bring back to the
United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...
for her mother who did not attend the funeral. Reluctant to give the bones to her mother, Ruth lets the bones sit in a tea can on her shelf in her closet. Years pass by, and finally Ruth decides it is time to complete the task given to her so many years ago. This film is separated into three sections. In the first section, Ruth tells the story of her grandmother's immigration to America as a
picture bride The term picture bride refers to the practice in the early 20th century of immigrant workers (chiefly Japanese, Okinawan, and Korean) in Hawaii and the West Coast of the United States and Canada, as well as Brazil selecting brides from their nat ...
who marries a Japanese photographer and poet. Ozeki tells the audience that her grandmother fell in love with her grandfather at first sight and was very content living in
Hawaii Hawaii ( ; haw, Hawaii or ) is a state in the Western United States, located in the Pacific Ocean about from the U.S. mainland. It is the only U.S. state outside North America, the only state that is an archipelago, and the only state ...
. Ruth's grandfather was an eccentric man who wrote one poem a day, made short films, and practiced rigorous mental training. He could impale his arm with a blade without bleeding and could walk on the blades of swords with his bare feet without injury. Also in the first section of the film, Ruth shows a series of short home films depicting her grandmother, supposedly filmed by her grandfather. Yet, as Ozeki transitions into the second section of the film, she debunks many of the events mentioned in the first section. Ruth states that her grandmother hated Hawaii and the small rural town that she lived in. She missed Japan and the familiarity of Tokyo. Thus, when she became pregnant with her second child, Ruth's grandmother falsely claimed sickness and was diagnosed to have a tumor in her stomach, which was actually her unborn daughter. Her grandmother then traveled by ship back to Japan to be treated by a specialist. Ruth explains that this is why her mother was born in Japan. Additionally, Ruth admits that she had created the home videos shown in the first section of the film. She explains that she had fabricated the clips in order to portray how she wanted to represent her family's history. In the third and final section of the film, Ruth delivers her grandmother's bones to her mother along with many of her grandmother's old belongings. Now in the narrative present, Ruth's mother rifles through old keepsakes and speaks briefly about each memento before finding the tea can holding the preserved bones. Ruth's mother compliments the tea can and carefully picks up each of the bones, thanking Ruth for bringing them back to her. Ruth asks her mother if she would wish to come along to set the bones to rest in Hawaii. Her mother refuses, stating she did not wish to revisit the old friends and memories from her childhood in Hawaii. She does, however, ask Ruth to take her bones along with Ruth's grandmother's bones and throw them both into the sea in Hawaii once she dies. Ruth agrees to one day fulfill her mother's wishes. Ruth then travels to Hawaii without her mother. After visiting her mother's old friends, Ruth visits the
USS Arizona Memorial The USS ''Arizona'' Memorial, at Pearl Harbor in Honolulu, Hawaii, marks the resting place of 1,102 of the 1,177 sailors and Marines killed on during the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and commemorates the events of that day. The ...
in
Pearl Harbor Pearl Harbor is an American lagoon harbor on the island of Oahu, Hawaii, west of Honolulu. It was often visited by the Naval fleet of the United States, before it was acquired from the Hawaiian Kingdom by the U.S. with the signing of the R ...
. On the memorial, Ruth notices that one man whose last name was Lounsbury – Ruth's father's last name – had been killed in the events of
Pearl Harbor Pearl Harbor is an American lagoon harbor on the island of Oahu, Hawaii, west of Honolulu. It was often visited by the Naval fleet of the United States, before it was acquired from the Hawaiian Kingdom by the U.S. with the signing of the R ...
. She realizes that in her exploration of her maternal-side family history, she had neglected her paternal-side family history. The film ends as Ruth throws her mother's and grandmother's bones into the
Pacific Ocean The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the contin ...
. The gesture is likely symbolic, as Ruth's mother is revealed to still be alive during the credits.


Analysis

Ruth Ozeki as the narrator and one of the main characters of the film, is known to be subject to her own opinions and biases. In the first third of the film, Ozeki leads the audience to believe in a falsified family history. In the second third of the film, she admits to having created the film clips and poems that had been attributed to her grandfather. In narration, she states that she more-or-less imagined a family history in order to reconcile her feelings of disconnectedness with her family. In an initial scene, a dramatized voice-over of her Ruth's grandmother explains that “Ruth” is difficult to pronounce in
Japanese Japanese may refer to: * Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia * Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan * Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture ** Japanese diaspor ...
, in which the name roughly translates to “absent.” Absence in Halving the Bones is a theme which is often depicted through the disconnected relationships between generations. For example, the absence of Ruth's grandmother from her memory is the catalyst for Ruth's quest for truth. Ruth's grandmother is sent to Hilo, Hawaii against her wishes to marry a man she had never met, but she contends that it was a happy period of her life. Half a century later, Ruth is suspicious of her grandmother's account of her youth. Once Ruth's grandmother had died, Ruth felt it was necessary to create a realistic representation of her grandmother's journey because otherwise, her memories would be forgotten. For Ruth, absence is an obstacle which must be overcome for the sake of preservation of memory. We find that Ozeki often plays with the truth which sets a light hearted tone throughout the film. The viewer is led on to follow along with what seems to be whimsical musings of the narrator and her representations of reality. Ozeki is set on discovering the truth from the start of the film. For example, in the first few minutes of the film, Ozeki refutes the common hegemonic values of Asian women by saying that her mother was nothing like the hegemonic norm. By doing this, Ozeki redefines our truth and sets standards of her own. Also, concerning infinity and totality, many of the characters seen in the film would be considered to have infinite depth especially Ruth herself. The purpose in Ozeki making this film is connect herself to her maternal family's history and to reconnect to her alienated mother who has only had limited contact with her relatives for a long while. Yet, as said by Ozeki at the end of the film, as she connects to one side of the family, she feels even more distant from the other side. When Ruth visits the USS Arizona memorial she mentions that she can only guess at the history of her father's ancestry which connotes the thought that her knowledge of her paternal family is extremely limited. So, as one story closes another begins.


References

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