Departures

It helps a little to know about a specific Japanese trait when considering 2008 film Departures - to the Japanese, death and dead bodies are a taboo, and as such the nōkanshi (traditional Japanese ritual mortician) are particularly unpopular. Sadly, working as one could almost be considered shameful - but this film shows the work in a new light, making it very dignified, reverent and even beautiful. Daigo Kobayashi (Masahiro Motoki) stumbled into the job by answering a newspaper advertisement about work regarding "departures" (the ad was meant to reference "the departed"), and old hand Ikuei Sasaki (Tsutomu Yamazaki) regards the somewhat taciturn Daigo, upon first sight, as well equipped for the job. His wife, Mika (Ryôko Hirosue), at first doesn't know about this new career path - and her husband is too afraid to just come out and tell her. When she does find out, and demands that he quit, Daigo has come to find great satisfaction and spiritual peace working in this way - so much so that her threats to leave him may not be enough. But what if she were pregnant? Will Sasaki keep his young protégé?

We see a lot of the almost meditative process of "encoffining" in this movie - it's not one to just skip over the procedure to focus on the melodrama, and I like that aspect of Departures. Once you've seen the whole film, it feels like we know most of what the ceremony entails. It's not just ritualistic - but a mix of practical mortician work and spiritual ceremony. The dead bodies are young, good looking people most of the time - tragic in real life, but obviously much easier for us to not be too disturbed watching the movie. It wouldn't put us in the right mood at all for what Yōjirō Takita is trying to do here. There's a lot of humour added also - such as the video-taping of the instructional training episode, where Daigo appears quite embarrassed in what looks like a diaper, so he can play a corpse. A moment where comedy and more exposure to the process blend and kill two birds with one stone. It's all something both uniquely Japanese in some aspects and universal in others. Families during the process are of course emotional, but often get a lot out of this last shared ceremony before saying goodbye for good.

Something which added a great deal to these beautiful moments in the film was the score from Joe Hisaishi, which very much emphasised the sound of the cello in the music. When the film starts, Daigo has been trying all his life to become an accomplished player - and the result of all of his efforts over the years has been a place in a second-rate orchestra which disbands due to a lack of an audience willing to come and listen to them. This cello music seems to represent the character and his harmony with the world, and it's like he's found something more in tune with himself in becoming a nōkanshi. We hear the cello music in a much more melodic way as the film progresses, and during one fantastical sequence which features great cinematography from Takeshi Hamada, we see him outside playing the instrument during a glorious day, with a great mountain vista in the background as the camera swirls about him. Editor Akimasa Kawashima includes many fading dissolves so the playing seems to represent time passing, and the harmony Daigo now has with his work and life in general. It's probably Departures' greatest crowning moment.

Masahiro Motoki plays shy and reserved really well - and I especially enjoyed watching his struggle to come to terms with encoffining. His first job happens to be a corpse left rotting for weeks before it was discovered - and his battle to keep his wits added a little comedic touch to a bad situation. The final scene involving Daigo's father was off the charts - I was tearing up. Ryōko Hirosue was sweet and maddening as Daigo's wife Mika - who really can't be blamed for her entire culture's inability to come to terms with the aftermath of death. I loved Tsutomu Yamazaki as the aging mortician - encouraging his young student with a great deal of patience and understanding. Both actors brought a great deal of dignity to each ceremony that they had to perform before the cameras - there must have been a lot of setting up for moments we'd see very briefly in the film. I also enjoyed the performance of Kimiko Yo as the NK Agent secretary for the pair - part of a tight-knit family, helping deal with the problems the two encoffiners might be having to deal with.

The film spends a good deal of time exploring the relationships we have with family and friends, even when they're distant and estranged. In the film Daigo goes to a public bath he hasn't been to for many years, and reaquaints himself with Tsuyako Yamashita (Kazuko Yoshiyuki) and a former classmate (played by Tetta Sugimoto) who becomes another person who demands he quit, all the while refusing to contemplate the father who left him and his mother for another woman (with anything other than barely suppressed rage.) Death will play an important part with how these feelings and relationships evolve over time, and how it often forces a person to acknowledge a painful past. The great thing about Departures is that it shows us how Daigo finds and nurtures a job that seems to be his calling, while the film as a whole manages to demystify the nōkanshi and show how dignified and important their work is. It shows the world how loving, spiritual and artistic the whole process happens to be, and shows this previously despised class of professionals in a new and worthy light.

So yeah - Departures has something of everything. Enjoyable comedy and a sense of melodrama that can really melt the heart in the film's closing stages - and I must emphasise that I didn't find it too soppy or melodramatic in it's closing scene. It was vital. It has as it's core narrative the story of someone taking on an unlikely profession which he seems doomed to fail at. His wife and friends demand he quit, and the man himself is nearly throwing up at the thought of what he must confront, and do. It's box office success in Japan - when financing was so difficult to find due to the lack of appeal there'd be in this kind of film - is a real feelgood story. It was assumed people would stay away - but the quality of the film itself opened everyone up and the country as a whole shared the experience of visiting a topic that would be regularly ignored and hushed up up until that point. Loved that music - it still plays in my ears - and it was filmed with great restraint when needed, and liberation when called for. It won Japan it's first Best Foreign Feature Oscar, and proved the many doubters wrong.

My favourite quote was about the salmon. Seeing them swim upstream and then float back down, lifelessly, he says "It's kind of sad... to climb only to die. Why work so hard if you're going to die." He's given an answer from someone who sees it differently : "I'm sure they want to go back... to their birthplace." The cycle of life complete - we all return. It's the most natural aspect of life, and shouldn't be feared, avoided, or railed against. Instead, it should be dignified, respected and an occasion for a family to bond and heal together.