The gift of last memories
Daigo Kobayashi is a devoted cellist in an orchestra that has just been dissolved and now finds himself without a job. Daigo decides to move back to his old hometown with his wife to look for work and start over. He answers a classified ad entitled "Departures" thinking it is an advertisement for a travel agency only to discover that the job is actually for a "Nokanshi" or "encoffineer," a funeral professional who prepares deceased bodies for burial and entry into the next life. While his wife and others despise the job, Daigo takes a certain pride in his work and begins to perfect the art of "Nokanshi," acting as a gentle gatekeeper between life and death, between the departed and the family of the departed. The film follows his profound and sometimes comical journey with death as he uncovers the wonder, joy and meaning of life and living.
Genre(s): Drama, Music
Runtime: 130 minutes
Rating: 8.2/10 (4,156 votes)
Release Date: 23 August 2008
Country: Japan
Languages: Japanese
Company: Amuse Soft Entertainment
Sound: Dolby Digital
MPAA: Rated PG-13 for thematic material.
Director(s): Yôjirô Takita
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Producer(s):
Yasuhiro Mase - executive producer
Toshiaki Nakazawa - producer
Ichirô Nobukuni - producer
Toshihisa Watai - producer
Writer(s):
Kundo Koyama - writer
Cast:
Masahiro Motoki - Daigo Kobayashi
Tsutomu Yamazaki - Ikuei Sasaki
Ryoko Hirosue - Mika Kobayashi
Kazuko Yoshiyuki - Tsuyako Yamashita
Kimiko Yo - Yuriko Kamimura
Takashi Sasano - Shokichi Hirata
Mitsuyo Hoshino -
Tarô Ishida -
Hiroyuki Kishi -
Miyuki Koyanagi -
Music: Joe Hisaishi
Yasuhiro Mase - executive producer
Toshiaki Nakazawa - producer
Ichirô Nobukuni - producer
Toshihisa Watai - producer
Writer(s):
Kundo Koyama - writer
Cast:
Masahiro Motoki - Daigo Kobayashi
Tsutomu Yamazaki - Ikuei Sasaki
Ryoko Hirosue - Mika Kobayashi
Kazuko Yoshiyuki - Tsuyako Yamashita
Kimiko Yo - Yuriko Kamimura
Takashi Sasano - Shokichi Hirata
Mitsuyo Hoshino -
Tarô Ishida -
Hiroyuki Kishi -
Miyuki Koyanagi -
Music: Joe Hisaishi
Posted on: May 14, 2009
Posted in: Drama
June 6th, 2009
Japanese movies always make me curious. A different continent, adifferent storyline. I was hoping for a very introvert tragic moviewith slow pending movie shots. But….. The story did develop fast. Idid not get acquainted enough with the main characters. Somemoves/interaction/dialog's/motives I classify as unnatural, especiallyfrom the main characters wife. Immediately after the beginning therewas some comedy in it. People in the cinema were even laughing and itdidn't stop. For me comedy and tragedy do not work. At the end Someover the top Hollywood like feelings do their work as a tearjerker.Finally it all fits together. Must be the reason for the Oscar.Everybody happy minus some dead people. For me this is one of themovies I do not remember after a year. Nothing new. Bit disappointing.
June 6th, 2009
The first time I knew this film was special was when it received a veryspecial award a few months ago, beating the favorite to win, but therewas something about the description and the preview that intrigued me.After seeing this sublime piece, I have to say you'll be missing out ifyou don't do the same.
"Departures" plays like a lovely symphony, carries you like a breeze,with its exquisite and touching direction, flawless and sensitiveperformances, and one of most memorable and beautiful scores ever toaccompany a film. There are so many moments during this movie that onecan't help but feel a connection with the most powerful of ourfeelings, wanting to surrender and rewire ourselves to be able toexpress our emotions in ways we have forgotten.
A frustrated musician needs a job and happens to be hired in as a manwho gets the deceased ready for their funeral rites, apparently a jobthat many people consider below respectable standards. As we discoverduring the film, our protagonist has his own appreciation of what thisnew position means, and little by little, we learn, pretty much like hedoes, that there is more to the job than we originally understood.
Luckily for him, he finds some supportive and well developed charactersalong the way who show him how to restructure his life again, amongthem is his lovely and charming wife who is probably one of the nicestcharacters ever on a film. There are the mother and father figures, whogive him some long forgotten knowledge, and he learns much as heassists the families of the people he works on.
In the end, after a pretty strong cathartic conclusion, there is mostlikely not a single dry eye in the house; yet one doesn't feelmanipulated in any way, but grateful we were able to accompany himduring his reevaluation of what life and love are. "Departures"deserves every accolade, recognition, award, and praise it receivesbecause it explores our humanity, asking us to revisit what makes uswhat we are, and ways in which we can become much better than what weare.
June 12th, 2009
A meditation on death that's startlingly different from a plethora ofsimilar films on the subject. Daigo, a cellist in an orchestra, loseshis job after its dissimilation. Fate forces him to move back to hishometown and eventually take a job as a mortician. As Daigo grows torespect the noble work that so many shun, he is forced to confront thepast in the form of his father, who abandoned him as a child, and thegrowing disdain of his wife on the job he has taken up. Everythingabout this film is masterfully done. From the taut script, which allowsthe camera to convey much of the dialogue, to the remarkableunderstated performances by the cast, and Joe Hiasishi's silentlyswelling score…every element falls into place perfectly. The subjectmatter is handled with the utmost care, careful to be tasteful and nottoo serious or light. Even so, Departures managed to make me smile,think, and cry at relative intervals. At its core, it's a film with auniversal message, that says: Mistakes, human differences, and evendeath should be embraced rather than scowled upon. Because really,aren't we all hurtling towards the same ultimate destiny? Memories areeasily altered or forgotten…it's the moments that are precious, inevery lifetime, from this one to the next.
June 15th, 2009
Oscar Winner for Best Foreign Language Film this year shocked manypeople because unless you were in the academy or in Japan you didn'tsee it. Having seen it I can completely understand why it won. It maynot be the best Foreign Language film of the year, but it certainly oneof the most touching and moving. The plot is simple, a cellist for alarge orchestra suddenly finds himself with out a gig. Moving home withhis wife he applies for a job that has short hours and big pay unawarethat its for a firm that prepares the dead for "departure". Needing themoney and liking the people he meets he takes the job, but doesn't tellhis wife. The film is what happens as he tries to find his place inthis new world. Stunning, charming, moving, magical, if you're like meyou will be reduced to tears. I absolutely loved this film a greatdeal. I loved everyone. I loved how you felt the pain and joy ofeveryone. I loved the small details, the holes in the floor of thecouples home that were put there by the young cellist, or asking forsome lipstick for the deceased. Small details that make it all real.One of the most heartfelt films I've seen.
June 21st, 2009
If subtlety and nuance are what you are looking for in a film, YojiroTakita's Departures may not be your cup of tea. If, however, you arewilling to overlook the film's overly broad strokes and focus on itsquiet dignity and the inner strength of its characters, it may strike aresponsive chord. Winner of the 2008 Oscar for Best Foreign-LanguageFilm, Departures is a film about the ritual of "encoffinment," thepreparation of corpses before their cremation. While it teeters betweenserious drama and outright farce and often seemingly can't make up itsmind what genre it belongs in, it is a film of understated elegancethat will leave audiences in a mood of contentment.
In the opening sequence, a cello player in a Tokyo orchestra is shockedwhen the orchestra's owner announces after a poorly attended concertthat the group has been disbanded. The cellist, Daigo Kobayashi(Masahiro Motoki), has been playing the cello since childhood and knowsno other profession. To compound his distress, he owes over $100,000U.S. which he borrowed to purchase his cello, a purchase he now revealsto his wife Mika (Ryoko Hisosue) for the first time. With littlechoice, he sells the cello and moves back with Mika to his hometown inNorthern Japan to the house left to him by his deceased mother, a housethat has many memories for Daigo, still embittered by his father'sabandonment of the family when he was only six years old.
Combing the want ads, Daigo answers an ad for a job in "departures"that does not require any experience. Thinking he is applying for workin a travel agency, he soon finds out that he will be an assistant toSasaki (Tsutomu Yamazaki), a master "nokanshi" who tells him that heworks with the "departed" -washing, dressing, and placing the deceasedinto a coffin in the presence of bereaved friends and family. In asegment of physical comedy, Daigo must strip down to a pair of adultdiapers to participate as the corpse in a training video. After that,he is initiated in the difficult task of casketing the body of an oldwoman who has been dead for more than two weeks, a most unpleasanttask.
Gradually, Daigo learns the profession, utilizing the creative,artistic skills he learned as a cellist. Though "encoffinment" is anancient ritual, apparently there is a stigma attached to working withthe dead, and Daigo is rejected by a childhood friend Yamashita (TettaSugimoto), and then by Mika who discovers the training tape and packsher bag to return to Tokyo, telling her husband that she will returnwhen he has a "normal" job. Starting to play the cello again after hediscovers the first cello his father gave him as a child, Daigo isshown with his cello playing in the countryside surrounding his homeand also plays "Ave Maria" for Sasaki and his secretary (Komiko Yo) atChristmas time.
Now performing ceremonies on his own, Daigo must deal with his ownfeelings of sadness when confronted with the death of people close tohim. Departures has its share of clichés but touches the heart and hasa calming effect. At first put off by the work he is asked to do, Daigolearns to appreciate the value of ritual and how comforting it can beto the loved ones of the deceased and he personally comes alive whenseeing how his work touches others. Competing with summer blockbustersfilled with bombast and brutality, it is good to see a film that offerscompassion and respect for the dignity and worth of all people.
June 30th, 2009
Daigo Kobayashi(Masahiro Motoki) paid eighteen million dollars for hiscello before he realized there were "limits to (his) talents." Now thatthe orchestra is being dissolved, the musician quits the professionalmusic world, and leaves Tokyo with his wife Mika(Ryoko Hirosue), butnot before selling the cello to a dealer. The manner in which Daigogives up his vocation so easily, makes it easy to agree with theunemployed cellist's assessment that being a musician "wasn't his dreamafter all." Daigo retreats to the small town he originated from withoutbothering to make the most basic fundamental overtures towards otherphilharmonics. As it turns out, the exorbitanly-priced instrument wasprobably an act of overcompensation, a ploy to conceal his cello envyfrom colleagues, and from himself. It's not that Daigo lackstalent(symphony orchestras don't hire hacks), but he lacks thatdeep-seated reverence for the music, and for the composer who laid downthe notes on parchment: in other words, for the dead(a good musicianperforms a resurrection of the past when he sits down to play)."Okuribito" is about a man who goes through the motions before helearns the true meaning of "performance".
Understanding that his new job doesn't involve the execution of anytravel agent duties, Daigo accepts this career change, casketing,skeptically, with mostly predictable results, as "Okuribito" finds theinherent(but obvious) comedy and drama in handling dead people. Isthere vomiting? Check. Is there crying? Check. With Sasaki(TsutomuYamazaki) as his mentor, Daigo learns how to touch people, as he comesinto their lives at the apex of heartbreak. Like baroque paramedics,family and friends gather around the two men as they transfer the bodyinto its coffin, steeped in Buddhist ritualism. People with differingreligious backgrounds have to concede that the mournful spectacle isdignified, compassionate, and genuinely moving. While the casketingstudent learns the ropes of his new trade, he rediscovers the cello,his first cello, that the young boy would play for his mother(nowdeceased), and father(who he hadn't seen for thirty years). The celloof his childhood isn't grand like the highly calibrated instrument hesold off, but it plays true, still. And through the course of Daigo'scasketing mentorship and ensuing autonomy, he learns to play music withreverence once more. Like Fred Flintstone who used the ballet toimprove his bowling, Daigo's attention to detail as a casketer hasinfused the fatherless man with a musician's intensity for making thenotes of dead white men indelible against time.
At first, "Okuribito" seems bent towards black comedy, especially inthe opening scene, played for laughs, as Daigo makes the discovery of amale appendage as he smooths the presumed girl's body with ceremonialclothing. Things get even more farcial in a scene where Daigo poses asa corpse for an instructional video. Later in the film, there's apayoff to this taping, in which the wife discovers her husband'sprofession at its most graphic, when Daigo's employer applies a clothdeep in his anus. (The wife's disapproval of her husband's occupationmight be a commentary on the changing mores of contemporary Japanese.)Mildly amusing at best, "Okuribito" jars the audience with amelodramatic presentation of its protagonist's baggage(daddy issues), aslide into bathos already set in motion after some minor characters(thewoman who runs a bath house, and one of her customers) take centerstage in a prolonged funeral scene that's too earnest for its own good.As the body combusts into flames at the crematorium, so does"Okuribito", and it gets even more maudlin.
Out of touch with his father since early childhood, Daigo travels to afisherman's co-op to preside over the old man's casketing. Eyes,blinking back tears, art and ceremonial function coalesce into one, asDaigo discovers one of the rocks they had exchanged on a beach,clutched in his father's leathery hand made stiff by rigor mortis,during a flashback propagated by the nostalgic-heavy sounds emanatingfrom his first cello. Like something out of Phil Alden Robinson's"Field of Dreams", Daigo plays his father's favorite instrument tobring him back, albeit in memory. They don't have a baseball to throwaround, but both father and son have matching rocks as a way ofreconciling the past.
July 6th, 2009
Masahiro Motoki is a good comic mime, a useful talent for depicting aJapanese in distress. He plays Daigo Kobayashi, a young cello playerwho faces the end of his chosen career when the Tokyo symphonyorchestra he is part of is dissolved by its owner. He doesn't think hehas the talent to get into another orchestra so he sells his expensivecello (which he's still paying for) and moves back to his town in thecountry. His wife Mika (Ryoko Hirosue) assents to this with bravesmiles. There's a house there for them that his mother left him.
And then comes the job. Daigo answers an ad that's promising."Departures," it says. He assumes something in travel. Easy hours, goodpay. The boss hires him immediately and gives him a wad of bills. Onlytrouble: the work is "encoffination," or putting dead people intocaskets for cremation. ("Departures" was a misprint for "Departed.")This is where Motoki gets to make funny faces as he struggles withsurprise, discomfort, and out and out nausea. The first corpse his bossSasaki (Tsutomu Yamazaki) takes him along to work on is an elderly ladywho was dead two weeks before she was found, and it's summertime. Afterthis ordeal he can't face dinner without retching. He hides from hiswife what he is doing. But the pay is good and the boss is a decent manand he needs work so he stays on.
In professional lingo Moviefone calls this movie "a feel-good dramadyabout death." Younger people, already sick of the Academy's easy Oscarchoices, mocked its members for giving the Best Foreign prize this yearto 'Departures' over the edgy Israeli animation about war trauma,'Waltz with Bashir.' Yes, 'Departures' is softer; but it has depths andits subject is universal. I'd listen to the octogenarian wisdom of theveteran New York critic Andrew Sarris, who calls this "the most movingfilm I have ever seen commemorating the bonds between the living andthe dead."
It's also a lesson in the beauty of Japanese tradition that expressesthose bonds. Not so long ago, as Sasaki explains to Daigo, Japanesefamilies prepared their own departed. Now the funeral agents and thecasket preparers (Sasaki is the latter) have moved in. But the processstill retains traditional honesty and grace. In a process bothelegantly respectful and forthright, the body is prepared in front ofthe assembled family mourners by the funeral professionals. (Sasakiturns out to be a very good one.) In a series of graceful gestures. thebody is wiped and cleaned, undressed, turned, and re-clothed, the facecaressed, the hands smoothed and placed together just so, all with thedeftness of motion that is the Japanese genius, and always discretelyshielding the flesh of the deceased from the view of the watchers.Then, well wrapped, the body is gently laid in the casket. The mournersmay come forward and say their goodbyes before the box is closed.Shortly thereafter it is taken to a crematorium. Daigo quickly mastersthe respectful drama of this process, particularly the way the face andhands are manipulated and the clothing is moved, and comes toappreciate the profound emotional meaning it has for the mourners. It'sboth a leave-taking of the person and an acknowledgment that thedeceased is really already gone. Of course immensely complex feelingsare involved. Daigo settles into the work. Nonetheless he continues tohide from Mika what he's doing.
When she finds out, she goes home to her mother, promising to returnonly when Daigo quits the job. But the way he enjoys playing his smallbut tuneful childhood cello again now shows he accepts his newcircumstances and is not unhappy. Daigo's roots in the town aresymbolized by the old bath house where he goes to cleanse himself afterthe dressing of the decomposing old lady on his first days's work. Itis run by another old lady, Tsuyako (Kazuko Yoshiyuki), the mother ofhis former best friend. When she suddenly drops dead and Mika returnsfor the encoffination ceremony, she realizes the beauty and importanceof the ritual Daigo performs for Tsuyako's family. Daigo's father ran acafé in their house and went off with a young waitress when he was aboy, abandoning him and his mother. He hates his father and doesn'twant to know anything about him. But when by chance — or moreaccurately screenwriter Kundo Koyama's obvious arrangement — he learnsabout his father's death, Mika pushes him to go and do the ceremonyhimself, with her at his side, and this time the ritual is a profoundpersonal healing process for Daigo himself, whose tears pour down as heperforms it. When a few months pass and winter comes Mika comes back tolive with Diago after she discovers she's pregnant, even though shestill wants him to quit the job. The film underlines how humble andtraditional roles are essential to a society, even as it looks down onthem, by showing the dignity of the encoffination process; of the manwho handles the cremations; of old Tsuyako running the comfortable oldbath house that her son wanted to close and turn into more profitablereal estate.
This film is a tribute to the magic and comfort of human ritual. Hencethe encoffination process is shown repeatedly, even behind the endcredits. It's what the film is about: everything else is footnotes tothis ceremony. Sometimes the mourners make it tumultuous, embarrassing,or comic. But it retains the beauty of a culture that knows the valueof theater. Takita's movie is more than the sum of its sometimessentimental or obvious parts. In the beauty of its most humdrummoments, with its focus on everyday family necessities (it celebratesfood too), 'Departures' is not at all remote from the quintessentiallyJapanese quotidian grandeur celebrated in the film masterpieces ofYasajiro Ozu.