Mother, Thank You for Everything

The title of this award-winning short film, "Frog in the Well", is based on an ancient and well-know Asian proverb: "The frog in the well knows not the great ocean."

 

 

The film's main character, "Joe," applies the proverb to himself following the death of his mother, whose final wishes send him on a journey to spread her ashes throughout Japan. At the start, Joe confides in his mother through a letter he wrote to her posthumously: "I am tired. Life's been like a puddle; stagnant and dull."

Feeling renewed by the end of his month-long trek, Joe realizes that his mother's purpose had been "not just for me to cast your ashes, but to discover the Japan I never knew." Tokyo had been his "puddle" for 10 years. "In Tokyo," he wrote, "I had been like a frog in a shallow well, unable to see the world around me." But complying with his mother's wishes changed everything.

Finally out of "the puddle" and while looking over it from the heights of Tokyo Tower, his mother's favorite spot, Joe reverently closes his letter: "Mother, thank you for everything."