A film that started well but lost itself towards the end

Rating: 6/10 (21 December 2012)

The film started well, but I felt it was ultimately unsatisfactory probably because the quality of cello playing as portrayed by the main star was too good for us to believe that he couldn't get a job as a cellist either as a performer or a teacher. It would have worked better if the cello playing was clearly that of a talented amateur, especially when he apparently played a child's cello as if it was a Stradivarius. That for me rendered the main story rather unbelievable, and I wondered why they had juxtaposed the cello playing with the job of undertaker. I also felt that once you had witnessed one Japanese funeral, the rest became predictable and ultimately boring, detracting from the main point of the film.