Departures

After seeing Departures, I can't say I'm surprised that it won the Best Foreign Language Oscar last year, not because it's great--it pales in comparison with Waltz With Bashir or The Class--but because it so obviously is catnip to the kind of voters who select the award--those of a certain age, who might have started to contemplate death, and who appreciate an old-fashioned Hollywood entertainment.

Departures, directed by Yojiro Takita, is from Japan, and in many ways is tied to the culture there. But in most respects it's basic Hollywood to its bones, to the point of edging way over into sentimental, maudlin drama. In English and with Western actors, this film wouldn't be out of place as a TV movie of the week, complete with manipulative scenes meant to tug at the heartstrings.

The story concerns a young man who, as the film begins, plays cello in a symphony orchestra in Tokyo. After playing Beethoven's Ninth to a sparse crowd, the orchestra is told they are dissolving and the man (Masahiro Motoki) is out of work. He and his perky wife (Ryoko Hirosue) move back to his home town, to live in his late mother's house. He sees an ad in a newspaper for a job involving "departures," which he thinks means a travel agency. It does, sort of. He's hired immediately by the eccentric boss (Tsutomu Yamazaki) as an "NK agent."

Since I have no knowledge of Japanese funeral practices, I'll trust that what we see is true to life. Apparently undertakers in Japan sub-contract to these NK agents, or encoffiners. They go to the home of the deceased, and in a ritual cleanse and prepare the body before putting it in a coffin. There seems to be no embalming involved. Why undertakers don't do this, as they do in America, I don't know. Anyway, Motoki is understandably reluctant to do this, as he's never even seen a dead body before, but Yamazaki has a hunch about him and of course he turns out to be a natural at it.

The film then goes on to show how death is inexorably a part of life, and the value that these encoffiners play to the families of the deceased. I've always been fascinated by people who work in the funeral business. It is a necessary and crucial function in society, but boy would I want no part of it--handling dead bodies and dealing, day after day, with people in mourning. But for those who have a talent for it, it is a rewarding work, as Motoki learns. Much is made of the connection between playing a cello, which is shaped like a body and sounds like the human voice, and the handling of a corpse.

So we get a look at a niche of society that isn't often seen, and that's good, but where the film goes off the rails is a completely hackneyed plot. A conflict, in which Hirosue is disgusted by her husband's job and leaves him, seems artificially manufactured, as is a subplot involving Motoki's long-lost father. The ending, which is supposed to turn on the waterworks, only had me rolling my eyes. It's interesting to see that the West hasn't cornered the market on lachrymose drama.