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After Life Director: Hirokazu Koreeda Number of Items: 1 Picture Format: Letterbox Format: Color, Widescreen Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated) Running Time: 118 minutes Studio: New Yorker Films Region Code: 1 Product Group: DVD Release Date: 2000-08-29 Buy from Amazon |
 "Happiness lies in giving to others"One of the most commonly reported aspects of near-death experiences is the life review, the seeing and re-experiencing of major and trivial events of one's life, sometimes from the perspective of the other people involved. Most say that the single most important lesson they learned is that the actions we think are trivial and unimportant turn out to be the most important, especially ones that involve spontaneous acts of love. In After Life, by Hirokazu Koreeda, a group of recently deceased people are asked to look back at their life and choose only one memory that they want to take with them to eternity. The process compels people to look at their life in its entirety and see what worked and what was missing. In what looks like a dreary barracks-like way station, civil servants meet with those just crossed over to help them choose the experience they want to hold on to. For some, the choice is easy, for others it is quite difficult. Those that will not or cannot choose are consigned to work in the substation with the newly deceased until they are ready to move on. The counselors work one-on-one with each individual, telling them that they have three days to make their choice. Once a memory is selected, a film crew recreates the memory -- sets are built and the little touches of sights and sounds are selected until the deceased are satisfied that they are witnessing a perfect recreation of their experience. It is that film that they take with them, not the original memory. At first some choose things such as a trip to Disneyland, a sexual encounter, or a memorable bowl of rice, but later gravitate toward experiences that are more meaningful. The center of the film revolves around those who are unable to choose. Ichiro Watanabe (Taketoshi Naito) is a 70-year old management consultant who has led an uneventful life and is challenged to find a memory he thinks is worth preserving for all time. To help him in this process, he is allowed to scan through piles of videotapes representing each year of his life. One young man wants to choose a dream instead of an actual event. Another wants to forget his past entirely, and an elderly woman is stuck in the mindset of a nine-year old girl. After Life is the story of the caseworkers as well. Takashi Mochizuki (Arata) has been stuck in limbo because he cannot find any happiness in his twenty-two years until he realizes how his short life deeply affected someone else. His perfect realization also affects a co-worker Shiori (Susumu Terajima) who has fallen in love with him. After Life is a beautiful and touching film that allows us to reflect on the things that brought us joy in our own life, and to recognize that true happiness lies, not in outward symbols of success, but in giving ourselves to others.  "Watching this movie would not be my "most favorite moment""When I rented this movie, the premise sounded very compelling. The more the movie played out, however, the more difficult it became to accept. Most of the movie was so slow moving that it gave me time to wonder: Why they would go to the trouble of recreating a "treasured moment" when they seemed to have the real thing already on video? What would a persons eternity be like reliving a single moment over and over? Many memories become golden by years of reflection. Even more damaging, if a person's memory was wiped clean of everything except their chosen moment, the moment itself wouldn't be worth reliving once let alone an infinite number of times with no memory of what led up to that point. (The movie comes close, perhaps, to defining a type of hell.) Technically, the acting was mostly only marginally good and the direction seemed very uninspiring. The English subtitles, fortunately, were of very good contrast and easy to read. The IDEA of the movie gave my wife and I something to discuss. It is for that reason I gave it two stars instead of one. But we could have had just as good a discussion by merely having read the description on the DVD box without having to waste over 90 minutes viewing this very slow movie that, I feel, could have been MUCH better. "It's a wonderful life"The Japanese title of this film is "Wonderful Life," and wonderful it is. Kore-Eda uses the premise of choosing one memory for all eternity as a compelling way to explore themes of memory, closure, loss and existential meaning. The film starts out with interesting stories of unique memories recounted by actors and non-actors. A small plot develops as the story follows the case of an older, slightly arrogant retired salaryman who believes he lived a meaningful life but is having a hard time choosing his one memory. Keep in mind that people who hated this film probably prefer plot-driven dramas. "After Life" is driven by quiet observations, with a small plot driving the film's main statement. The thing that impressed me the most was Kore-eda's representation of heaven or the after life. Kore-eda's heaven evokes and celebrates so many aspects of Japanese daily life -- the school life of children, the driving productivity of salarymen, and the quiet, contented simplicity of the elderly population. The staff of counselors at this halfway-house to eternity scrub the floors and tidy up their office first thing in the morning the way my Japanese mother remembers doing at her school in 1950s Tokyo. Like salarymen, they discuss their increasingly heavy case load and the film follows the tense timeline of their one-week deadline to recreate and film the memories. The film also captures the beauty of falling autumn leaves and sakura (cherry blossoms) through the eyes of an elderly woman with Alzheimers. There is no idealism in Kore-eda's heaven. The staff's building looks like an old, run-down school house and the props they use to film their staged memories have a summer camp, high school production feel to it. Some of the dead change their minds about their memories, and one chooses not to pick at all. The staff is also faced with a corporate schedule and mom-and-pop resources, but things eventually fall into palce. Oddly enough, in Kore-Eda's heaven, there is no closure. The counselors who run the place have chosen for various reasons to not pick one memory for all eternity, and they must continue on with the daily frustrations of being human. People still experience unrequited love and loneliness in heaven. Counselors pass time by reading the encyclopedia volume by volume. There seems to be little solace, except in the closure one makes for oneself by finally choosing a memory. Kore-eda's film doesn't make any striking or profound statements about existential meaning, God or eternity. In fact, there are no evocations of God or a higher power. By singling out one memory (true or fabricated), the film almost suggests that the experience of living is really just "content" for us to draw from in deciding what the meaning of our existence has been in the end. The film benignly suggests that meaning doesn't seem to exist in its own right, it's something illusory that people create. We aren't faulted for needing illusions, it just seems to be an accepted part of our humanity. For such a quiet film to make such compelling and powerful observations, I give it 5 stars. "...ponder your own existence while breathing."After Life is a thought provoking film that depicts 22 individuals who have been sent to a place between the living and the hereafter. This place functions as a reflective and meditative station where three counselors are to guide the 22 characters through questions to remember their most enjoyable moment while alive. However, there is one stipulation to this task for each individual, which limits their contemplation of their memories to three days. The following step for the three counselors is to recreate the memory of each individual through shooting a film that resembles their fond memory. After Life is shot with a grainy texture and the cinematography reminds the audience of the spontaneous camera movement of documentary styled films. This is a part of Koreeda's deliberate direction as he wants to depict his brilliant vision and persuade the audience to ponder their own existence while breathing. "One Memory"_After Life_ was one of my numerous unopened DVDs that sat upon my one of my shelves untouched by human hands but caressed by a large amount of dust. Bored, I finally decided to view it today and I was not disappointed. The plot of the film is quite simple: Individuals who have recently passed away are asked by an after life bureaucratic bureau to select one incident from their lives to take along with them to the next world as the only thing that they will remember. However, instead of taking their memories along with them in their brains, a short film is made instead. If one is looking for a film with even a modicrum of action, this is not the film. For the most part this film has the feel of a documentary which, in a way, it actually is. 500 people were asked to relate what memory they would like to take to the next world, and the result is this film. In fact some of the "actors" in this film are not actors at all, but individuals expressing their favorites memories which includes an old man telling of when he was given water and rice by US soldiers, an old woman's memory of the dresses her older brother purchased her, and a young girl remembering how her mother cleaned her ears. There are also other individuals who feel as if they do not have any good memories so they have to search through their lives to find a spark of goodness. A great film that not only touches on what is important to various human beings, but on how memory and fiction mingle. |
