Poetry

Rating: 9/10 (19 July 2012)

Departures is the appropriate title, as the subject matter is death. Daigo is a cellist with an orchestra in Tokyo which has money problems. They are broken up and he becomes unemployed with little hope of finding a job playing the obscure instrument. He travels back to his boyhood home with his wife, Mika.
Daigo answers an ad for assisting departures; having no idea what the phrase means. At the interview, he is asked if he will work hard. His first day is very bizarre, as he is is volunteered to play a dead body for an instructional DVD. It gets even stranger; an old lady who has been decaying for two weeks after kicking the bucket. The odor makes Daigo nauseous, and while traveling home on the bus, the fellow passengers notice his smell and avoid him. He stops at a public bath to wash up, before going home. His wife is embarrassed at his new career choice, and asks him to quit. He takes pride in his work and many family members of the deceased thank him. Mika leaves him and even his best friend, Yamashita, tells him to find a better job. However, when Yamashita's mother dies, it is Daigo who prepares the body for cremation.,
Daigo presents his wife with a stone from a river bank as a symbol of his love for her. They reunite, although she still tries to persuade him to change careers. Meanwhile, he gets the news of his father's death and is unsure what to do. His dad had abandoned the family and taken off with a waitress when Daigo was a child.
The finale is heartbreaking, and Departures is a unique and beautiful film.