Stoic response to Japan tsunami

The documentary “Pray for Japan,” shot in the weeks after last March’s magnitude 9.0 earthquake and subsequent tsunami that ravaged northeastern Japan’s Tohoku region, plays more like a sales tool for Japanese patience and obedience than as a gripping look at grand-scale loss and survival.

Perhaps director Stu Levy, an American filmmaker then visiting Japan, should have placed an observer’s closing comment about the native response to cataclysm — “Most people would cry out in pain, but our people simply accept it” — at the movie’s start to prepare us for the picture’s almost eerily tranquil tone.

For the 90 minutes before we’re presented with this muted summation — and the genteel, clearly honest human interactions that precede it — it’s hard not to wonder if, by contrast, there wasn’t a single emotional meltdown or unruly response available in the wake of so much tragedy. Cultural differences are one thing, but involving an audience is another.

The movie, which pingpongs between the chapter headings “Shelter,” “School,” “Family” and “Volunteers,” tells uplifting stories about how, post-disaster, various locals (and some foreign visitors) mourned, aided, rebuilt and rebounded with almost unearthly amounts of optimism and generosity.

Poetic narration punctuates this lyrical, well-shot film, but it all comes off too staid and mechanical to truly stir the heart and soul. “Pray for Japan.” No MPAA rating. Running time: 1hour, 37 minutes. At AMC Del Amo 18, Torrance; AMC 30 at the Block, Orange.