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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 |
 "the best"I know this sounds like its not saying much as its so short and to the point, but honestly, you MUST see this film. This is the only movie to ever, ever make me cry. It makes you think. Forget about it being japanese. Forget about the subtitles. Forget anything that makes you not sure about seeing it. You NEED to see this film. Trust me. I dont say this about ANY other film "bravissimo!"I can't add much to what other reviewers have said: this is a fine, understated, and deeply moving film. Where other film-makers rely on orchestral music and contrived situations as old as Western theatre to twang your heartstrings, this one uses reality: the reality of human existence. For that reason it twangs the ol' heartstrings louder and more musically than the most expensive Hollywood super-packaged drama. The fundamental human tragedy is that we grow old and have to leave this world, and all the memories we've accumulated, like refugees driven from our homes. Against this tragedy, of which young people are mercifully unconscious and the middle-aged all-too-conscious, all other tragedy is played out like busy action in front of a grand unmoving backdrop. Rather than promising us a saccharine-sweet Heaven (as in 'What Dreams May Come') to paint a Disney happy-ending over the fundamental sorrow of life, this film offers us a moral and intellectual challenge -- to discover the one precious thing we would save from "this burning house" and take with us into an Eternity so different, so strange, that in it we will have become nothing but this one vivid memory. Few films I've ever seen have captured the poignancy of time and its passage, the emotional wealth and fragility of old age, the tragedy of life wasted, the depth of human self-deception, and the capriciousness with which meaning, like lightning, strikes in any life and illuminates some completely unexpected moment. Plenty of writers and directors have tried. But this film -- unpretentious, gentle, quiet, and full of a kindly, self-deprecating humour -- captures all of that and more. The only jarring note -- and it may have been introduced deliberately to preserve a realistic "japanese bureaucracy" feeling in the processing centre -- is that there's only one female staff member (and she's always the one serving tea, too)... While this may irritate the feminist viewer a little, it's a minor irritation in a nearly perfect film. This is a fine film, a delight. I confidently predict it will stand the test of time and in 20 years be considered a classic. See it and think about your life :-)  "DVD quality is disappointing"I'll just focus on the DVD quality, and it may sound picky. Compared with the standards of other DVDs, this one is very disappointing. The subtitles are a fixed part of the movie and cannot be switched off. The movie looks as if simply taken from a videotape without any further work. This can be seen in the subtitles. They dissolve in and out as on a TV screen (first every other pixel-line of the subtitle is shown, then in the next frame the whole subtitle appears). While this is okay for a VCR tape, it's not on a DVD where you can actually notice this. The most disturbing thing is that whenever there is a subtitle, the very left edge (maybe 3%) of the movie becomes covered by a black bar, which can be quite annoying! This causes noticable flickering whenever subtitles go on and off. Very disappointing and lazy editing on the DVD publisher's part. You probably don't see this on a TV because that region may not be on the screen, but you can clearly see it when watching on a computer DVD. Five stars for the movie, one and a half stars for the DVD quality. Overall, still a nice DVD to have, though it could be a lot better.  "Inheriting the Mantle of Ingmar Bergman"Hirokazu Kore-Eda is becoming a kind of modern-day Ingmar Bergman. Between AFTER LIFE and MABAROSI, he's proven that he's interested in the kind of morality-driven stories that the late Swedish filmmaker specialized in. AFTER LIFE is a wonderful film, full of skilled acting and brilliant storytelling. This is one of those all-too-rare movies that brings about hours of contemplation and discussion afterwards, and is a movie that you'll be proud to recommend. It's also a very well-photographed film, and is infinitely improved by a DVD rather than VHS viewing. Even those who aren't fans of foreign films will find much to love here; the story is universal and truthful that it transcends language barriers. "Subtitles for "AfterLife""I am the DVD Producer who authored "Afterlife." I can understand the reviewers complaint about the subtitles being in the video, not as a menu driven feature. This was the only version of the master that was available for the DVD. I certainly would have loved to have a new digital master from a pristine print without the subtitles and a DVD subtitle feature, but it just wasn't possible for this release, given the timetable and budget constraints. One of the problems with DVD releases of "Indy/Art" films ( and I don't mean that in any kind of negative way) is that availability of masters specifically for a DVD are hard to come by. We had to use the master that was created for the VHS release in the USA, which was created with the subtitles. I hope that this doesn't detract too much from the film, because it's a great film and I think that anyone that buys the DVD and watches the film will feel that they got their money's worth. At least I hope so, even though in an ideal world I would have loved to do this film justice with a new, pristine master created specifically for the DVD release. |
