Departures (original title Okuribito) is a 2009 Oscar-winning Japanese picture,
directed by Yôjirô
Takita. The film follows Daigo Kobayashi, a young cellist living in Tokyo, whose orchestra has
been dissolved and he decides to move back to the town where he grew and look
for a job there. After a
misunderstanding he winds up in a job as an “encoffiner”, a professional who
clean and prepare corpses to their funeral and entry into the next life.
Despite this being a job he is frowned up by other for, he starts to take pride
in the job and the film becomes a study of life and death.
As the film
beings to explore, life, the meaning of life, death and what comes after death,
the film could easily have turned into a philosophical mess, but luckily it
never crosses that line. The director never
tries to shove anything in our face, but lets us observe and study the ideas
presented to us. Despite death being such a underlying theme in the film, most
people will still leave the film in a pretty good mood. It is by no means a
feel good film, but it is very much about celebrating life and finding joy in
life. That being said, many people will tear up at one point or another, as
there are some extremely emotional scenes in here.
The cast is
astounding, with a standout-performance from lead actor, Masahari Motoki, who
does everything perfectly in this complex role. Daigo is a tough role, he is
surrounded but death and grief while trying to find his purpose in life and rid
himself of ghosts from his past. Motoki shows great range in a very naturalistic
performance where he has to display every emotion from the deepest sorrow, to
joy in finding purpose, love and family. In the scenes where he is performing
his rituals in front of the grieving family of the deceased, he observes and
feels their pain, but he manages to turn the lifeless corpses into something
beautiful before they are sent off, giving the family one last joy with the
deceased. Motoki also does a great job of brining insecurity and uncertainty to
the role, in situations where necessary and everything just works with this
character as he has such a great arc and undergoes such a journey. The rest of
the cast are very good as well, especially his boss who has been in the
business for years. It is great to watch how the two of them always surround
themselves with living this to make up for the death they daily face. Daigo´s
boss lives in a room which looks pretty much like a jungle, as it is so
chockfull of plants.
The film is
for the most part very well directed, however it does have some pacing issues
(and is very slow which might bother some, but I don’t mind it) as it got to
point where I felt like it was a logical point for the film to end, but then it
went on for another 15 minutes or so which kind of bothered me. That being said,
those 15 minutes were absolutely necessary for ending the story and completing
the character arc, but I wish they could have made I go more fluently and found
a better way of telling the end of the story. Another issue I had was that it
got a little heavy on unnecessary emotion by the end. Literally the last five
scene or so of the film, there was a new character that broke down crying and
it really didn’t feel all that necessary and when we came to the finial scene
which was very good and full of well-earned emotion, it didn’t have as big of
an impact as it should´ve because we were still processing all the emotion from
the previous scenes. The final scene still had a pretty big emotional impact,
but it would have been more effective if it weren’t for the previous scenes.
Also one thing that might really be nitpicking, but I will mention it anyway,
early on there was a scene with the orchestra playing and it felt oddly
Kubrickan and sort of out of style from the rest of the film, but that is very
minor and didn’t really affect my overall opinion.
This is
definitely an excellent film, with brilliant cinematography and imagery, acting
and characters. You have to be prepared for two things though, firstly this is
a very slow film, and secondly, there are many things that will seem weird, but
these are due to the way Japanese culture is, which of course seems natural for
them, but may seem odd from an outsiders perspective and it took some time
getting used to certain things, which doesn’t harm the film at all, but gives
us a good look at Japanese culture as well. This is a very hard film to process
after one viewing and I will be re-watching it again eventually and my issues
may go away after a second or third viewing, but my score still reflect how I feel
of it as of now, but this may change.
4/5
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