Departures

Friday 27th November 2009

Dir. Yojiro Takita
Rating ***

This poignant film has become internationally acclaimed since it won the Best Foreign Language Film Academy Award early this year. Director Yojiro Takita’s touching story based on an unconventional idea triumphed over many, and quite rightly so.

When Daigo Kobayashi’s (Motoki) dreams of being a professional cellist in Tokyo are dashed, he returns to his small suburban hometown in Yamagata with his wife Mika (Hirosue) in the hopes of finding a normal, steady job and starting afresh. Not long after they arrive, Daigo finds an ad in the paper offering great money in the ‘departures’ industry and immediately goes to the interview with high hopes. But after meeting Sasaki (Yamazaki), the company owner who offers him the job no-questions-asked, Daigo’s hopes for a ‘normal’ job diminish and he learns that he has been hired as an encoffiner’s assistant, which involves ceremonially preparing corpses for cremation. With no other job prospects, Daigo reluctantly accepts the position, but ashamedly keeps the details of his new career from his wife, revealing only that his work involves ceremonies. But as Daigo encounters each body, along with their grieving families, he begins to appreciate the beauty of the encoffiner’s workmanship and develops a new understanding of the relationship between life and death.

Yojiro Takita’s adept blend of comedy and drama in this tale of Japan’s oldest tradition is both enchanting and endearing as we witness various families that have been touched with death – from an elderly grandmother to a cross-dressing boy – and the way in which encoffiners act almost as a medium between the departed and their loved ones. With moving performances from both Motoki and Yamazaki, we, as viewers, journey with Daigo as his perception of an encoffiner changes from being that of the greatest taboo to being that of a humble service; and as grieving children bid a last farewell to their parents, and vice versa, the importance of this ritual becomes most prevalent, especially to those left behind.

Though slightly dragging in the end and with an unconvincing performance by Hirosue (most frustrating opposite a wonderful Motoki), Departures offers a touching grace as the delicacy of a misunderstood profession unfolds; and with an honest and moving sentimentality, the film offers a refreshing, and at times comical, view of the cycle of life and death.

PUBLISHED IN SCREEN JABBER