When a last chair cellist in a Japanese orchestra loses his job, he realizes he will never be able make a living as a musician. He sells his instrument, looks for work and is overjoyed to be offered work with a firm called “Departures.” Thinking it’s a travel agency, he’s stunned to find out that it is really an agency that prepares bodies for burial, usually in the family’s home of the departed. At first he’s repulsed by the work, but slowly begins to understand the importance of the work, as a means of helping relatives cope with grief and as a way of fulfilling his own destiny.
Now in theaters, Departures won the Academy Award for Best Foreign in 2009. It easily could have been morbid or maudlin, but it’s neither. Low key, with moments of humor and pathos, it’s the kind of film the Japanese do better than anyone. Another example in a similar vein is After Life, an another extraordinary Japanese film from 1998.
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