Movie- Departures

Departures, from Japan, was nominated for an Oscar last year and won in the Best Foreign Film category.

Wow! What a great movie! Departures (2008) was a fantastic movie out of Japan, and deserves all the honors it can get. It is sad, funny, thoughtful and intense. About Daigo, a cellist in an orchestra who suddenly finds himself out of work. He and his wife return to his hometown in the country, and he stumbles upon a new career, that of a nakanshi, one who prepares the dead for burial.

Daigo is not comfortable with this new job, but he watches his mentor, who prepares the dead with ritual and care...he treats the dead with dignity and reverence, and maybe love. And as Daigo watches this, he becomes more caring too...not just about the dead, but about the living.

The line between death and life is so slim...and it is really evoked in this fantastic film. The ritual they use to prepare the dead, helps to both blur that line, and to make it secure...to let the living be alive, yet accepting of the death of the loved one, and to be able to express their sorrow and sadness.

Daigo does not come easily into this career, and it does not come without some costs...but he does make the calling his own. His story, with his wife, and father who abandoned him, makes a nice counterpoint to the story of his new vocation. But they are also very intertwined...like life and death.

This movie was excellent. Some reviewers felt a bit manipulated with their emotions, but I did not feel that way at all...we are discussing death here. It cannot help but be emotional. Death is an emotional time. But I did not feel like the movie took advantage of this unnecessarily at all. Departures felt true and heartfelt, but not like overblown melodrama. It is a movie well worth watching.