Totally delightful and meaningful Japanese movie, subtitles are easy to follow.

Rating: Null/10 (15 April 2011)

I believe this movie won the Oscar for best foreign film, and it is easy to see why. The main character is Daigo, a young man who grew up playing the cello, and finally has a job with an orchestra. But it is quickly dissolved and Diago decides that he really isn't good enough to pursue a well-paying professional career. So he and his young wife move back to the smaller community he was raised in.
He needs a job, and finds an advertisement for "departures", which he interprets as some sort of travel booking service. He interviews and "Boss" offers him a job, on the spot. We find out later it was because Boss had a hunch about Daigo.
But the ad was incorrect, Boss says it is for "the departed", a job to prepare dead bodies for the coffin. We see, in Japanese culture, this involves a process that is performed in the home, with friends and family looking on. It involves ceremonial washing of the body, all in an elaborate choreography to keep the body itself from being exposed.
Daigo gets off to a rough start, he isn't sure he wants to deal with bodies, and the stench at one home, where the person had been dead for a few days, really gets to him. Besides, he didn't even admit to his wife, Mika, what he actually did.
But Diago is a natural, once he gets over the initial hurdles. He has a natural empathy for family members and a reverence for the dead. Friends and then his wife try to get him to quit, but Daigo sees his profession as something good, as it contributes to the happiness of survivors. Eventually, when a close friend dies, and Daigo performs the ceremony, everyone realizes this too and Diago's profession is finally appreciated for what it is.
Masahiro Motoki as Daigo Kobayashi
Tsutomu Yamazaki as The Boss
Ryôko Hirosue as Mika Kobayashi