Understanding Beauty of Death—a Japanese Treasure

Departures
Yojiro Takita
Japan
2008

“Departures” in simple words is the best film I’ve ever watched made in the 21^st century. Passionate, highly-emotional, and enlightening, Takita expands the beauty and importance of this sentimental film by a skilful direction and unmistakable understanding of life, delivered through immense cinematography by Takeshi Himada and a breathtaking music by Joe Hisaishi. Winning the Best Foreign Language Film Award at the Oscar 2008, “Departures” and lots of others from different part of the world, this film celebrates the uncelebrated—the   misunderstanding of a job responsible for preparing a dead person in his coffin; and its opposite—the understanding of such job and which realization is way beyond the most overwhelming warmth of a sunshine.

Daigo (Masahiro Motoki) is desperately looking for a job after the orchestra where he is playing and working for is dissolved. He lands himself in a funeral service. He is hiding his job from his wife Mika (Ryoko Hirosue), but as how it is expected she learns about it, and she doesn’t like it, and she wants Daigo to abscond the job. Daigo though has started appreciating the concealed and undervalued meaning of his job. When a family friend needs the professional service of Daigo and Mika witnesses for the first time how her husband does in his untamed occupation, she realizes and perceives it now the way her husband does so. Daigo never had his father after he was six and this brought lots of prolonged torments to him. When he learns that his father has just died, he is definite to say that he is not going to see him. But Daigo works for the deceased and their loved ones, and he can never really miss the chance of doing what he does so well in his estranged father.

The film is an emotionally monster film. Every single movement in the film is filled with feelings that have gotten themselves from a long journey as long as life. “Departures” is so beautiful that none of all those people who cried in the film looked so hopelessly pathetic, that no single moment in the film is a bore, and that no single scene in the film departed from the very lovable and coherent narrative thread of the story. Wonderful is the film in the sense that the main character Daigo’s (Motoki) life is not the focal source of all the rejuvenating conclusion of tears but rather his character prompts all the supporting cast and elements in the film to be in their most powerful form without overshadowing the lead character. This in return, gives the audience easy time to understand why Daigo has grasped the fulfilling scenery of his employment. The scene where he and his boss prepared the body of the first woman in front of her family is extremely commendable. Takita knows how primacy and recency effect works. The first job assignment of Daigo in the house of an old woman who died unknowingly for already two weeks doesn’t give the so called beginner’s luck for our main man but gives the beginner’s unlock instead. The second assignment, the one I mentioned earlier then provides the compensating nature of the work. The mother who died, aside form having recall from the death of Daigo’s mother, shows off what the film’s strength is—emotions. It becomes really amazing how these people (loved ones of the deceased) grab my towering empathy and feelings despite the fact that we only see them in a single scene or a couple of scenes. Even the scene where a father has died and all his loved ones are women and they all printed kiss marks on the face of their father causing smiles and pure laugh followed by sudden deluge of bereavement causes me to cry as well. Before making a conclusion, I want to add as an example the final scene where Daigo called his dead father ‘dad’, indicating forgiveness. The answer is simply—death draws all of the humanness we humans have inside. It is a powerful anthropological constitution that usurps all the pride and anger from the human heart, and bestows all the love we never thought we had for a person, and even when we think we already love a person very much, in time of the inevitable hour, we will be surprised that we don’t even really know how much we love them because our love for them becomes immeasurable and unthinkable.

 

“Departures” has a very coherent and very complementing form. So rigid that it holds and shapes and guides the viewer’s emotions carefully and precisely. The screenplay is just superb and since I am afraid to use the word perfect then let me just say it is near perfect. There is difference between a story and a screenplay, though many people think that it is basically the same, because the screenplay holds the story. I have to agree, it makes sense. But screenplay is a higher form of story, a more cinematic term for it, where a story is figured to a shape of how the film will become full of life. In simple words, a screenplay is a combination of a good story and good storytelling. “Departures” simply got a heart-warming story but what I am really loving about the film is the storytelling. With that, I am particularly referring to its form, and as according to Bordwell and Thompson, film form is the interconnecting system of all the elements in a film. Daigo as a cellist is a fantastic characterization made for the protagonist because it provides an instant logic to the sound and music that will accompany the film all throughout aside from the fact that the beginning part of the movie looks very sophisticated. Living in Tokyo and moving to his childhood house is also a harmonizing metaphor to a big decision and life-changing future waiting for the two. Daigo’s internal conflict with his father, appends emotional alarm to the story even though what is happening in his life is rewardingly positive. The no-father-figure issue of Daigo keeps us aware that our protagonist won’t be doing his occupation for a long time without being able to do it to someone a part of his life. I was actually expecting either his wife or his boss to be the next person Daigo will be working on to, but to have his father dead is nevertheless a good turning point in the film to release Daigo from all the long-buried pain and as well as his father’s. The film is highly-semiotic: the octopus represents a decision; the bath house signifies an old custom struggling for survival similar to Daigo’s love for music; lifeless people in coffins correspond ironically to the increasing understanding of Daigo’s job; the pregnant Mika positively recoils the relationship of Daigo and his separated father; and the most important aspect of the film—death is a beginning, a departure from the world to a new and better life.

Speaking of death, this actually gives reference to Japanese masterpieces of Akira Kurosawa—Seven Samurai (1954), Ran (1985), and one of my my favourites—Rashomon (1950). These movies essentially include death especially in Kurosawa’s Ikiru (1952). “Departures”, just like its Japanese filmic ancestors, has a good tone affixing humour to drama.  Masahiro Motoki is radiatingly good. His free-flowing movement in his profession ritual is magnificent. He shows awe in dexterity and most importantly the respect he pays for the dignity of the ones who depart. A crying man is a big apple, it has to be treated with utmost sensitivity. With the great direction from Takita, Motoki’s in-tears performance when he was wiping the face of his long unknown and now dead father is as resounding as a masterpiece that is surely going to be timeless. Another great scene from Motoki happens when he is dispirited by his work and he arduously embraced and kissed his wife. A beautiful picture of demonstrating how a man mellows, and how he becomes passionate and how he becomes as helpless as a lost soul resorting to the security of a woman’s love and of her soft body becomes a very memorable part of this exquisite film.

“In the tradition of understanding life and death way back from its great cinematic influences of all Japanese artistry of Akira Kurosawa, delivers a riveting, unbelievably moving, and deeply enlightening interpretation of knowing life in the most unexpected place. Beautiful and heart-warming, simple and truthful, artistic and cinematic, “Departures” is a film that makes me love films more unfathomably.