WFF24 |The Summer Book, A Bittersweet Story after Moomin

The Summer Book is the warmest yet most melancholic film I've watched at WFF24.

This is a film adaptation of Finnish author and Moomin series creator Tove Jansson's 1972 novel The Summer Book. It tells the story of an elderly woman, her 6-year-old granddaughter Sofia, and Sofia's father spending a summer together on an island in the Gulf of Finland. They explore nature and discuss everything. This sounds like a warm, fairy tale-like story. However, while watching The Summer Book, I constantly felt an inescapable melancholy. Before the grandmother and granddaughter came to the island, Sofia's mother had passed away. This cast a veil of sadness over all the joy, and to some extent isolated the characters from each other.

Sofia is lively, full of curiosity and imagination about the world, seeking companionship from her grandmother and father, but her father is often absent, and her grandmother doesn't have enough energy to answer all her questions. The grandmother moves slowly, her life entering its twilight years. She enjoys solitude in nature, like lying alone on the grass, basking in the sun, listening to birdsong, watching plants grow. But this solitary enjoyment is always interrupted by Sofia's appearance. Sofia's father remains at the edges of the frame. He is always silent, busy alone, rarely interacting with Sofia.

While watching, I felt that all three of them were deeply lonely, though each in different ways.

Sofia's loneliness is that of a child. Her curiosity about the world goes unanswered, and she has no companions her own age. Her mother is gone, and her father's presence is scarce. Even the kitten she carefully nurtures has its own independent habits. Her grandmother, the only one she can lean on, seems to have her own world - a world Sofia cannot fully understand.

Sofia's father is also lonely. He is immersed in the grief of losing his wife. From conversations between the grandmother and Sofia, we learn that Sofia's parents had visited this island together before. The contrast between past and present is what makes it most heartbreaking. He records his daughter Sofia's moments on the island through his drawings.

The grandmother embraces her solitude. She seems to know her life is entering its final chapter, so she treasures every moment of life all the more. The film frequently intersperses scenes of the grandmother alone on the island. She passes through tree hollows into the secret garden she discovered in her youth, lies on tree trunks, closes her eyes to enjoy the sunlight. She removes all her clothes and walks briskly through the forest. She seems to be remembering her own childhood, while also trying to feel every vibration of this world.

The characters' loneliness is established as a fundamental premise in the first half of the film. This adds potential dramatic tension to an otherwise simple story. Based on the characters' states of loneliness, the film builds to an emotional climax: On another day of island exploration, the three take a boat to a small island with a lighthouse. Sofia and her grandmother go ashore and enter an abandoned house. The father remains alone, drifting on the sea in the small boat. Suddenly, a storm arrives. Sofia anxiously worries about her father inside the house. The father struggles to drag the boat back to shore. When the drenched father pushes open the door and reunites in an embrace with Sofia and grandmother, the story reaches its peak. Outside rages the storm, while the three generations comfort each other in the room with a lit fire, finally breaking down the barrier between Sofia and her father.

Afterward, they welcome the brightest part of summer: the tree they planted sprouts. Sofia and her father communicate more. The grandmother seems to have let go of a great worry.

Until the end of the film, on another morning. The grandmother seems to hear a sound. Like a boat rumbling loudly. Looking at the sea, she slowly realizes it's not the sound of a boat, but her heartbeat. She slowly lies down on the rocks by the sea. The camera slowly pans up, turning toward the sea, toward the sky. The grandmother's heartbeat, beat by beat, finally stops. The film ends here.

This is a light, enduring film mixing warmth with melancholy, filled with nostalgic atmosphere. It feels like someone reminiscing about their childhood. Though many praise its warmth, personally, I find this warmth carries an undeniable sadness. In my view, this film, like its source material, isn't really meant for six-year-olds like Sofia.

Throughout the work, not a single line of dialogue discusses the little girl's deceased mother, yet everyone can feel the impact her passing has had on everyone. Most notably, of course, in Sofia's father's state. That almost impossible-to-dispel sadness constantly surrounds him. It seems the grief of losing a loved one is permanently etched into his life. This reminds me of my own father. My father never met his father, and when he was very young, his mother eloped and left home, abandoning him and his sister while they were still young. I feel a part of my father's emotional life seems forever frozen in that lonely childhood of losing his parents. Even after he married and spent over twenty years with my mother, he never fully dispelled that loneliness and sadness. When people leave the room and laughter subsides into silence, he appears particularly desolate. Just like the father in the film. After my mother passed away, he seems to have never truly been happy again. I left home, and when I occasionally return to visit him, I can always sense his undisguised negative view of life. Sometimes I can't even bear being alone with him. And my presence seems to constantly remind him of the fact that he lost my mother. So when I see Sofia's father's thin figure, always alone, I deeply empathize with his sorrow.

But beyond the father's character, the film's visual language itself carries a layer of loneliness. The film begins with summer's melting ice and snow, yet the Gulf of Finland's weather still looks cold. The little girl and grandmother wear sweaters, and they still need to keep fires burning indoors. The entire island is quiet, with rarely any animals appearing except for an occasional cat. Nature is presented in a gentle, silent way: sunlight, seawater, moss, soil, forests, shrubs, rocks... The film contains many shots of the island's natural environment, but they are all so quiet, gentle, and slow. The island seems to have no communication devices, completely isolated from the world. Through this, we seem to enter a microscopic world where the three generations accompany each other, yet all seem isolated in their own spaces.

I believe this visual language and the film's tone also stem from the atmosphere created by the original novel. In novelist Ali Smith's assessment, The Summer Book "reads like looking through clear water and seeing, suddenly, the depth." Though seemingly light and warm, it uses simple strokes to discuss things that both children and the elderly care about: life, death, love, and companionship. This reflects author Tove's middle-aged perspective. When this book was published, Tove Jansson was 58. Before this, most of her novels and comics were aimed at children. Her The Moomin books made her regarded as Finland's most important children's author. But in 1970, Tove's mother passed away. Tove's mother, Signe Hammarsten-Jansson, was also a renowned Finnish artist. In this artistic family, Tove and her siblings were deeply influenced by their parents' artistic temperament, with Tove having an especially deep connection with her mother. She lived with her parents until age 28, deeply influenced by her mother's artistic sensitivity. Tove wrote that her mother was the person who understood her best, and even in her later life, she "continued to imitate her mother, trying to paint like her mother did."

Her mother's passing in 1970 had a profound impact on Tove's writing. Critics believe that in many of her subsequent works, one can strongly sense the grief brought by her mother's death. Published in 1970, Moominvalley in November explores themes of separation and loneliness,*and is considered the most mature work in the Moomin series. Later came The Summer Book, which this film adapts. The publication of this book not only marked the end of the Moomin Books but also shifted Tove Jansson's writing toward adult literature. The grandmother character in the story was based on Tove's mother, while Sofia was based on Tove's niece.

The creative background of this book explains the inescapable melancholy I felt in the film. Because in it, I saw myself. This isn't just a simple pleasantry, not just something said casually to praise the film's moving nature. I not only saw my father in it but also saw myself as if on a lonely island. When my mother passed away from illness when I was 21, I felt my world completely change. My relationship with my mother was very close, and her death completely changed me. The world in my eyes, just like what's presented in The Summer Book, is always permeated with an atmosphere of nostalgia and grief. I'm constantly reminiscing about an increasingly distant past, trying to relive those gradually disappearing memories. It seems the further time moves forward, the further I get from the days when my mother was still here. Every moment of laughter is followed by an instant of sadness. But I don't reject this sadness. I see it as part of life. Birth, aging, sickness, death, laughter and sadness, loneliness and companionship - these are all paths we must travel. Avoidance and resistance are meaningless; perhaps all we can do is remember and feel. Hold tight to those we love while we can embrace them, quietly experience life while we can still feel its growth.

Don't miss any summer day, don't miss any embrace.

Until our heartbeats stop, until we return to ultimate solitude.