In March 2011, a six-minute earthquake triggered a tsunami in Japan that killed 18,000 people. It was a devastating natural disaster, but strangely, the tsunami has inspired this calming, tranquil documentary – really more of an art piece – from Swedish visual artist Jennifer Rainsford. It’s a dreamy reverie of a film that drifts along, carried into obscure corner by her curiosity.
We meet three tsunami survivors including a man who has looked everywhere on land for his missing wife, then took up diving to hunt the ocean for her. It sounds like a story from mythology: an impossible, doomed feat of love, a man spending his life searching for his lost soulmate.
Rainsford also films inside a lab where technicians restore water-damaged photographs: family snaps salvaged from homes. With the gentle rub of chemicals, faces miraculously appear out the smears. (Of course, your first thought is: is this person still alive? Did they make it?) More than 100,000 photographs have been rescued: “memories in physical form” as one technician puts it.
There’s also a section about “ghost nets” – the fishing nets that washed out to sea during the tsunami, getting tangled with plastic and junk, killing wildlife. It’s grim but then Rainsford’s thoughts wander to a barnacle attached to a fishing net. The barnacle has the longest penis in the animal world proportionate to size, she explains in her voiceover – speaking barely above a whisper.
Arthouse streaming sites are chock-a-block with cine-essays such as this; deeply personal films that often leave me wondering who the directors make them for. Just themselves? Rainsford, however, has an infectious sense of wonder at life in the universe; her attention drifts from the big bang to neurology, then plankton that seem as if they are at a rave. Under the microscope, these neon-lit little guys move in a trance like clubbers. It’s a film that might drive you potty with whimsy, but I found it mesmerising, in places.
• All of Our Heartbeats Are Connected Through Exploding Stars is available from 22 December on True Story.
