WOOD AND WATER/MOTHER AND SON/ MOVIE AND REALITy

 Photography, painting, and digital technologies have profoundly transformed the plastic arts. Aesthetics now increasingly pursues the abstract.

Cinema, however, as a product of technology from its inception, may be the art form least altered by such transformations. The genres of films from the silent era remain relevant today, even the contemporary science fiction adorned with the most complex effects.
Cinema was born to evoke an endless sense of alienation; it is, in essence, a product of artifice and construction. This alienation does not stem solely from the filmmaking process or the journey from production to the audience. Cinema exists through the convergence of people who seem close but are brought together only to create a film.
The ensemble of actors is called the "cast," and the screenwriter and director present this cast to us within the framework of a finished film. The most fundamental alienating aspect of cinema lies in these disparate components coming together to create the illusion of a coherent, authentic story. After all, the story is a construct, the actors are playing roles, and they are concealed within the frames of a film reel.
While watching Wood and Water, knowing that the director is the son of the film’s main character does not, on its own, dispel this sense of alienation.
Yet, as the film’s story unfolds, it delivers an authentic message about the bond between mother and son. The mother travels from Germany to Hong Kong to see her son but cannot reach him. Within the film’s minimalist and tranquil pace, there are few clues as to why this is the case. However, we know that the film is directed by the son of the main character. The mother is in front of the camera, visible to us, while the son is behind it, making it impossible for us to see him.
I don’t know if the film’s writers intended this interpretation. Many films have been made where the director and actor share a parent-child relationship. What sets Wood and Water apart is its portrayal of the mother-son relationship, which overshadows the actor-director dynamic. The son-director presents his mother not as an actress but as a traveler. The story begins in the forests of Germany, journeys to the shores of a German sea, then to the bustling metropolis of Hong Kong, and cyclically returns to its starting point.
Within the slow, almost painterly tempo of this journey, the son-director both reflects on his mother’s life and accompanies her. Despite his sibling’s gossip about him to their mother, he brings her to Hong Kong to meet him. But he sends her back to Germany without a reunion, seemingly confirming his sibling’s judgment.
In Hong Kong, amidst protests, he watches his mother from a distance. She calmly meets new people, never questioning the path her life has taken, and he perhaps expresses his admiration for her resilience.
Wood and Water transcends mere spectatorship by making the mother-son relationship the heart of its story, using the language of cinema to convey that life is nothing more than a collection of ordinary moments. Could a son be so callous as to invite his mother to Hong Kong and send her back without meeting her? Considering that he allows her to share her troubles with a psychologist, he seems to have plenty of reasons for this choice.Wood and Water can be seen as an experiment in exploring new possibilities within cinema’s seemingly transformation-resistant structure. Can cinematic language intertwine with family ties?
Cinema’s ability to weave together the societal and the individual, the artificial and the real, the distant and the near, the natural and the constructed, may be realized precisely in this way.I believe Wood and Water takes a step toward showing that new cinema is no longer satisfied with telling imaginary stories. It suggests that the heroes of life and film need not be sought far away.