Beginning as a cultural and religious exploration of the Japanese Monks that reside on the top of Mount Hiei near Kyoto, then transforming into a profoundly personal reflection on director Ahsen Nadeem’s own life, “Crows Are White” is an acute meditation on the powers, and limitations, of religious fervor.
The film begins in the fog of the mountains, as Nadeem — and his small band of filmmakers — are finally given access to the monastery after years of asking. Purposely cloistered, the monks at the monastery aren’t exactly receptive to Nadeem’s intrusion. Famous for practicing Kaihōgyō, or marathon walking, Nadeem is particularly interested in meeting with one monk, Kamahori. He has undertaken a sacred ritual that asks him to walk every night for seven straight years. This extreme physical act roughly equals walking the circumference of the earth. If a Kamahori fails, he is expected to commit suicide. If he succeeds, he’s achieved enlightenment and is considered as a spiritual equal to Buddha.
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Night after night, Nadeem follows the silent monk as he walks up and down the mountain, hoping that some of his passion and dedication will transfer to the filmmaker. As Nadeem explains in voiceover, he’s going through his own crisis of faith. Raised a devout Muslim, he has since fallen in love with an American non-believer, something he has hid from his mother and father. Aware that telling his parents will likely result in their rejection and that his lover cannot accept his double-life, he doesn’t know what to do.
The monastery — and Kamahori in particular — seemingly offer Nadeem a tangible connection to God, or at least a person that hopefully can give him spiritual guidance. Yet, as quickly becomes apparent, the monks aren’t exactly open to Nadeem using them as spiritual therapists. Very quickly, he is kicked out of the monastery for a perceived slight and is forced to spend time with a lower-ranked monk who runs the gift-shop, Ryushin.
Unlike Kamahori, Ryushin eschews the conventional beliefs of many at the monastery. He drinks, he loves heavy metal — particularly Slayer — and is generally considered by the others to be a screw-up. Yet he also sneaks Nadeem into the monastery, continuing to provide the filmmaker with the proximity that he thinks he needs to get answers to his own life.
Named after a false statement that the monks are asked to affirm as a testament of faith, “Crows Are White” may begin as a document of Kamahori’s fervent devotion, but really the film is an act of self-reflection of Nadeem. Interviews with the various monks quickly transform to home-videos, as Nadeem’s quest for answers stretches out over years. He continues to seek Kahamori’s wisdom and grows closer to Ryushin, all the while hiding his true life from his parents and grappling with his own questions of faith.
If Kamahori and Ryushin represent opposing ideologies of faith, one dogmatic and the other open-minded, Nadeem continues to gravitate towards the latter. By setting these two monks up as seeming binaries, “Crows are White” grapples with the ritualization of faith. What does it mean to commit one’s life to, say, walking up and down a mountain? Or even spending 90 days in complete darkness, as other monks at the monastery do? What purpose do these rituals serve to the person outside of the functions of faith?
“Crows are White” is, rightly, more interested in bringing up these questions than providing concrete answers. When the second half of the film moves almost completely away from Kamahori, and the monastery, Nadeem becomes even more the subject of his own work. We see his parents on Zoom calls, and intimate conversations with his wife, with the continued hope that Kamahori, and maybe even Ryushin, might provide him with the spiritual guidance he desperately craves.
By the time that Nadeem finally gets his interview with Kamahori, and also sit down with his parents in person, “Crows are White” has completely transformed from a work of ethnography to one of personal excavation. How that interview goes is perhaps unsurprising — yet in the end, “Crows are White” is an emotionally resonant first feature-length documentary from Nadeem. It’ll be exciting to see what he makes next. [A-]
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