Departures
Directed by Yojiro Takita
At Lincoln Plaza and Landmark Sunshine cinemas
Runtime: 131 min.
If I truly cared about which films won Oscars, I would be enraged (instead of cynically nonplussed) about director Yojiro Takita’s Departures winning the award for Best Foreign Language Film this year over Laurent Cantet’s The Class and Ari Folman’s Waltz with Bashir. Takita’s film is a twee, quirky, feel-good drama about overcoming self-imposed repression and embracing life at its fullest by returning to one’s roots, overcoming personal obstacles and forgiving the sins of the past. Accordingly, it’s as thoughtful and inoffensive as a stifled fart.
Departures is all about the detrimental effects of the stereotypical repression affecting young Japanese people. Daigo Kobayashi (Masahiro Motoki) is a cellist but his orchestra just disbanded and he can’t repay the 18 million yen that his instrument is worth. He then decides that he doesn’t have enough talent to support his lifestyle, sells back his cello and returns to his family home to look for more reasonable employment. While there, he responds to a misprinted want ad from the Japanese equivalent of a funeral home that reads “departures” instead of “the departed” and reluctantly becomes a high-paid “encoffiner,” or someone that prepares corpses before they’re put in caskets.
As a person brought up in a society so reserved that it considers his career to be both embarrassing and unclean, Daigo hides the nature of his job from his wife Mika (Ryoko Hirosue) for as long as he can. His big challenge becomes not only overcoming his prejudices about his new job but learning enough from it that he can quell the insecurities of others.
Being the star of an overlong, sap-happy crowd-pleaser, Daigo’s so emotionally constipated that, in his self-conscious quest, he needs to have his life reaffirmed by several activities-cum-metaphors. First, there’s his return to playing the child-sized cello his absent father made him practice with. Then there’s learning how to appreciate the “peacefully and beautifully” humane qualities of cleansing cadavers. Oh, he also reaches out to others by giving them stones whose features reflect how he feels about them. Finally, he learns to appreciate good food thanks to his unconventional boss (Tsutomu “I can do no wrong” Yamazaki). At least Forrest Gump stuck to his box of chocolates.
Directed by Yojiro Takita
At Lincoln Plaza and Landmark Sunshine cinemas
Runtime: 131 min.
If I truly cared about which films won Oscars, I would be enraged (instead of cynically nonplussed) about director Yojiro Takita’s Departures winning the award for Best Foreign Language Film this year over Laurent Cantet’s The Class and Ari Folman’s Waltz with Bashir. Takita’s film is a twee, quirky, feel-good drama about overcoming self-imposed repression and embracing life at its fullest by returning to one’s roots, overcoming personal obstacles and forgiving the sins of the past. Accordingly, it’s as thoughtful and inoffensive as a stifled fart.
Departures is all about the detrimental effects of the stereotypical repression affecting young Japanese people. Daigo Kobayashi (Masahiro Motoki) is a cellist but his orchestra just disbanded and he can’t repay the 18 million yen that his instrument is worth. He then decides that he doesn’t have enough talent to support his lifestyle, sells back his cello and returns to his family home to look for more reasonable employment. While there, he responds to a misprinted want ad from the Japanese equivalent of a funeral home that reads “departures” instead of “the departed” and reluctantly becomes a high-paid “encoffiner,” or someone that prepares corpses before they’re put in caskets.
As a person brought up in a society so reserved that it considers his career to be both embarrassing and unclean, Daigo hides the nature of his job from his wife Mika (Ryoko Hirosue) for as long as he can. His big challenge becomes not only overcoming his prejudices about his new job but learning enough from it that he can quell the insecurities of others.
Being the star of an overlong, sap-happy crowd-pleaser, Daigo’s so emotionally constipated that, in his self-conscious quest, he needs to have his life reaffirmed by several activities-cum-metaphors. First, there’s his return to playing the child-sized cello his absent father made him practice with. Then there’s learning how to appreciate the “peacefully and beautifully” humane qualities of cleansing cadavers. Oh, he also reaches out to others by giving them stones whose features reflect how he feels about them. Finally, he learns to appreciate good food thanks to his unconventional boss (Tsutomu “I can do no wrong” Yamazaki). At least Forrest Gump stuck to his box of chocolates.
