Nemureru mori

The Cast:
Nakayama Miho, Kimura Takuya, Nakamura Toru, Jinnai Takanori, Yusuke Santamaria, Natsuyagi Isao

In a Nutshell:
A 15-year-old crime casts a long shadow on a young woman whose lost memory of the incident returns with a vengeance. She meets a mysterious stranger, who vows to help her reclaim her forgotten past.

(SpoilLert: Major, major plot revelations!!! Proceed only if youfve watched the ENTIRE drama!!!)

[Recommended companion track: gA Sorta Fairytaleh by Tori Amos]


Once upon a Time, in a Faraway Landc

I enjoyed Nemureru Mori for the dark, modern-day fairy tale that it is: it takes the Sleeping Beauty archetype and gives it an urban-whodunit spin, setting it in 1998 Tokyo. But here the Sleeping in question is a psychological rather than a physical condition, as it is the Princessf memories that remain submerged for a certain time period, to be Awakened by the Prince at the right Moment. (But who is the Prince, pray tell? Is there even one at all?)

When stripped of its more palatable, Victorian-era coating, the Fairy Tale is no childrenfs bedtime reading. Ifm glad that Nemureru Mori feels less like Hans Christian Andersen and more like the earlier work of the Brothers Grimm, with the gore and the gloom and the, er, grimness not seen in their later (and heavily sanitized) versions. I welcome fairy tales in all their literary incarnations, in particular Angela Carterfs gThe Bloody Chamber,h a collection of retold fairy tales--dark, violent, sensuous and lushly romantic, but at times also bleak and terrifying.

The question, therefore, would be: if this is the story of Sleeping Beauty, who are the other characters? Whofs the Wicked Witch? The Fairy Godmother? The White Knight? But given the murder-mystery angle of Nemureru Mori you know that everything and everyone is immediately suspect\with the exception of Beauty, through whose eyes we watch the story unfold. Soc could it be that certain characters in Nemureru Mori are actually composites of two or more of these fairy tale figures, who in turn may (or may not) be fundamentally disparate from each other (i.e. what if the Prince turns out to be the Big Bad Wolf?)--thus rendering them more ambiguous (but more interesting)? Ifve read enough crime capers and Agatha Christie mysteries to expect the unexpected and brace for twists in the plot. You try to second-guess peoplefs motives and anticipate the telltale signs that may (or may not) Mean Something Later On, those breadcrumbs in the woods that point the Way Out. And the woods of A Sleeping Forest have this beautiful, surreal quality to them, where time and space lose their real-world sway. It truly is an enchanted place, one both tranquil and threatening, a secret dream-garden where a long-forgotten evil lurks unseen.

The starting point of our story is a Christmas Eve massacre in a picturesque little town 15 years past. Beneath the snow-coated rooftops and steeples of churches, beneath the clear voices of carolers rising through the winter air, a gruesome crime has just been committed: the cold-blooded murder of three family members. The rain has washed away all traces of the killer, all evidence of his identity. Amid the flashing police sirens and crowds of onlookers, the body bags are carted into the ambulance one by one, the child Minakofs family--dead forever. That the carnage happened at Yuletide, of all times--is inconceivable, and yet the proof of this horrific deed is incontrovertible: the red stains against the snow, the bloodied corpses, the knife left behind when the murderer fled the scene. The 12-year-old girl Minako, the sole survivor of this nightmare, retreats deep into the darkness, her spirit broken and all memories locked away inside, in a place where even she dares not go. And through it all, the statue of the Virgin Mary at the nearby church remains the lone witness to this scene, her marmoreal countenance sphinx-like in dispensing either benediction\or judgment. And so our Fairy Tale begins...

Full-length review:

http://endersgirrrl.wordpress.com/2009/10/31/drama-review-nemureru-mori-a-sleeping-forest-fuji-tv-1998/

The pace is slow and there's no build up to the climax. I do admit that I couldn't figure out the suspense and just had to take guesses which were right in the end but I was sure it wasn't the obvious. There's a few things didn't like in the drama. 1. Why did a few characters have to die unnecessarily. 2. Why throw in a some characters like Keiichiro's mom that will leave you hanging. 3. What is up with that ending? The two can't end up together so one of them died? How did that person even die?

I'm so disappointed at that ending. It's similar to the other Kimutaku drama "The smile has left your eyes". At the least the tragedy in the end was more fitting and justified.

This overly complex mystery/thriller uses all the cheap tricks in the book just for effect and only succeeds in making you guess which character is the least unappealing.