Flowers of Grass is Takehiko Fukunaga’s fully realized portrait of a young man of fastidious intelligence and great sorrow, and shows us how it is possible, seeing reality from the side of death and despair, to still choose life. Outside Tokyo, a tuberculosis sanatorium in the village of K has a six-bed ward that the narrator, an aspiring poet, shares with a student of linguistics and budding writer named Shiomi. After the stubborn Shiomi insists on undergoing a dangerous surgical procedure and dies in the process, two notebooks turn up in his bed-sheets. Flowers of Grass unfolds as the narrator reads them, asking himself if Shiomi’s death was a sort of suicide, and learning the details of his late friend’s two great loves: for a brother and sister, both of whom reject him. Fukunaga himself spent seven years recuperating from tuberculosis following World War II, and drew on his own experiences to create a fully realized portrait of a young man of fastidious intelligence and great sorrow, and how it is possible, seeing reality from the side of death and despair, to still choose life.

Flowers of Grass is Takehiko Fukunaga’s fully realized portrait of a young man of fastidious intelligence and great sorrow, and shows us how it is possible, seeing reality from the side of death and despair, to still choose life. Outside Tokyo, a tuberculosis sanatorium in the village of K has a six-bed ward that the narrator, an aspiring poet, shares with a student of linguistics and budding writer named Shiomi. After the stubborn Shiomi insists on undergoing a dangerous surgical procedure and dies in the process, two notebooks turn up in his bed-sheets. Flowers of Grass unfolds as the narrator reads them, asking himself if Shiomi’s death was a sort of suicide, and learning the details of his late friend’s two great loves: for a brother and sister, both of whom reject him. Fukunaga himself spent seven years recuperating from tuberculosis following World War II, and drew on his own experiences to create a fully realized portrait of a young man of fastidious intelligence and great sorrow, and how it is possible, seeing reality from the side of death and despair, to still choose life.