Released October 15, 2009
Beating out other high profile releases such as Waltz with Bashir for the best foreign film Oscar is this touching Japanese drama about an out-of-work cellist who falls into a career as an “encoffineer”: those who dress and prepare the dead as the bereved say their final goodbyes. Daigo is played by Masahiro Motoki as a sort of well-meaning awkward child who slowly becomes more comfortable with his socially maligned job and, critically, his relationship with his estranged father, whom he has not seen since he was a child.
He is instructed in the fine art of washing and dressing the corpses by the hardened veteran Sasaki, his boss and mentor. The care and affection to which Sasaki and, eventually, Daigo, pay to their work is touching, poetic and accompanied by the aching strains of Joe Hisaishi’s cello-based score.
What’s most impressive is director Yokiro Takita’s bravery in taking on the subject of death and how it is perceived – or denied – by the living. His thesis seems to be that embracing the “circle of life” is the only way to find solace with our ultimate fate. The dead and roasted chicken Daigo and Sasaki devour on Christmas Eve, for instance, is representative of this never ending cycle.
While beautiful in its monotone reverence of those passed, the dramatic beats are telegraphed too early and the final act is too repetitive. Shameless emotive montages over soaring strings push and pull in all the right places and threaten to replace the heartfelt sincerity with something more manipulative. There’s also a very uncomfortable splash of oddball humour that is too weird to gel comfortably with the otherwise respectful and sincere tone.
Clearly perfect award bait, Departures is nonetheless at pains to avoid any real drama. Like the musician, later mortician, who seems more interested in the art of his profession than its heart, it is a beautiful and uplifting affirmation of life through death, but one constrained by its own peculiar brand of manipulation.
