Departures: a death theme movie brimming with joie de vivre

Rating: Null/10 (22 May 2009)

Death is as chilling and bloodcurdling a subject as it is inexorable. It becomes much creepier and spookier when it is a movie subject matter as cineastes mostly take sanctuary in the diverting world of cinema especially at a time the global economic downturn and the rambling despondency thereof is the talk of the town. Voilà! There comes Yōjirō Takita from Japan who turns the tables on all movie maharishies with his counterintuitive Departures.
Departures tells the story of an upwardly mobile cellist who, with his band disbanded, answers an ad for someone to help with departures. Much to his chagrin and consternation, Daigo Kobayashi (Masahiro Motoki) lands a job in the encoffinning service instead of a travel agency. For want of a better job and as his deadpan employer Shōei Sasaki (Tsutomu Yamazaki) offers him cash galore, he reluctantly accepts to ply his trade in cadavers. As embarrassing and outlandish as it is, he hushes up the whole affair from his doting wife. All initial ineptitude and ick factors asides, he warms to the profession as he cottons on to the fact that even with anal cotton-stuffing he can bring about a change in the way survivors treat this holy profession. The way he sends off the deceased to the afterlife (where the Japanese title Okuribito comes from) with special makeup and ethereal beauty is a solace to those left behind. It is the death of his own father against whom he holds a deep-rooted grudge for abandoning his family for another woman which radiates his already fresh life with more charm and pulchritude. For fear of spoilers, I can not go any further with the plot.
Highly oxymoronically, Departures is as morbid and deadly as it is vivacious and animated. With the chocolate-box countryside, gorgeous rivers, life inspiring bonsais and mellifluous music, this great helmer Mr. Takita embalms the taboo theme with sweetness, delectation and joviality that reminds the viewer of the fact that there is far more to death than meets the eye. Mr. Motoki's riveting and understated performance is the frosting on the cake. The only bone I can ever pick with the movie is its sometimes high reliance on contrived symbolism as in the case of a fish swimming to birth place only to wind up dead and a live octopus which reminded me of a scene in another Asian masterpiece "Old Boy".
Like most of other Japanese directors, Mr. Takita tried his hand with pink films. His resume starts from the ridiculous to the sublime. As death is the most egalitarian of all things, so he has nothing to be ashamed of.