Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes

We need stories like this to help us cope with unimaginable events: the atom bombing of Hiroshima in 1945 being a perfect case in point. One of the victims of the first nuclear bomb used in combat was young Sadako Sasaki, barely a toddler when her city was destroyed and diagnosed with radiation-induced leukemia a decade later. While confined in a hospital she began folding 1,000 paper cranes to fulfill an old Japanese legend claiming that anyone who does so will be granted a wish, but Sadako died (at age 12) after completing only two-thirds of the total. Her schoolmates finished the rest, and after publishing Sadako's diaries earned enough money to raise a monument in Hiroshima's Peace Park, dedicated to all the children killed in the atomic holocaust. In that way Sadako's wish did come true, after a fashion, and her spirit is alive and well in a beautifully rendered 30-minute film, narrated by Liv Ullmann over the solo guitar of George Winston and some evocative watercolor sketches by Ed Young. The film succeeds by telling a simple story very simply, striking a perfect, harmonious balance between its three understated elements: voice, music and drawings.