Saying Goodbye
by David Patrick Stearns
JANUARY 12, 2010 TAGS:
On screen, the funeral industry is rarely dramatized without the filter of satire, gallows humor or other distancing between subject and audience. Even the relatively enlightened HBO series Six Feet Under, about a family-owned funeral home, turned into a soap opera with ironic euphemisms – “the death-care industry” was my favorite – while the 1965 classic film The Loved One portrayed a sanctimonious funeral executive who solves a real-estate problem by blasting human remains into outer space. Maybe the burial business is just too grim and emotionally complex for candor – or was, until Japan’s Departures won the 2009 Oscar for best foreign film.
Few films deal with death as honestly and resourcefully as this one, which is released on DVD Jan. 12. So unexpected are its accomplishments, the film can barely be envisioned until it's seen. It explores the Far East custom of “casketing” - a ceremonial preparation of the body, witnessed by friends and family, that includes bathing and makeup application, performed with a formality that assures no flesh other than face, hands and feet is exposed. In some moments, the ritual resembles tucking somebody into bed for the night. Once handled by relatives, casketing has become a niche profession that undertakers outsource, but it is slow to be respected. In fact, the film itself might seem too contemplative and full of corpses for a mainstream public. Yet it has achieved classic status in Japan, where it has grossed $61 million. In my circle of moviegoers, the film inspires initial resistance and then multiple viewings. You often hear people recommending it, saying, “Don't worry, it's funny.” And parts of it are.
Director Yōjirō Takita meets viewers more than halfway. The script is masterfully constructed, the acting animated. One of the most emblematic scenes arrives at the beginning and out of chronological order, teasing what's to come. A handsome young newcomer to casketing is washing the body of a beautiful young woman under the dignified cover of an outer garment, when he hits an unexplained snag. Discreetly, he defers to his older boss, who quietly sizes up the situation: The corpse is, in fact, male. Facing a gallery of mourners, the boss gently asks the working-class parents if they want the deceased to wear male or female makeup. The comic eruption is worthy of an “Ask Judy” column.
Then the film backtracks to a different world: A mediocre symphony orchestra in Tokyo is being shut down, leaving the young burial specialist of the first scene - cellist Daigo Kobayashi (played by Masahiro Motoki) - out of a job and deeply in debt from the purchase of a cello on which he has pinned his hopes for an international career. Knowing that he's not good enough, he and his effervescent wife, Mika (Ryoko Hirosue), retire to his small, mountainside home town and the house in which he grew up – empty since his mother’s death. Soon, we see the psychic damage Daigo suffered when, at age 6, his father (whose cello recordings are still in the house) ran off with another woman. Daigo answers a misprinted job ad he believes to be for the travel business – the ad mentions “departures” - but he finds himself in the casketing profession.
Daigo's first job involves an elderly woman who has been lying dead in her apartment for two weeks. The neophyte learns how to function and then retreats to a public bathhouse where he nearly scrubs himself to death. Too nauseous to eat dinner, he has a fit of weeping and, in a hormonal rebellion against the death he has witnessed, desperately makes love to his wife. But when she learns of his new line of work, she walks out. “You're unclean!” she says. Childhood friends shun him as well.
Here, all the film's components are set in motion for a unique journey. Daigo discovers his childhood cello in the house, broods over his father’s disappearance and stares into the river for hours, watching salmon attempting to swim upstream and seeing how many of them die trying. That, in effect, is what Daigo is doing: A secretive man who carries the weight of the world, he tried to pursue a great music career without the emotional foundation to succeed. But the love and reverence he brings to casketing are greeted by the mourners’ profound gratitude, representing a communion with the ancient culture he has eschewed. Daily encounters with death bring him to life. Some critics have complained that Daigo's return to playing cello later in the film seems digressive; in fact, it's the film's point. How can you express yourself, verbally or musically, until you know who you are?
The contrast between the casketing crew of Departures and Six Feet Under's loopy funeral family (Ozzie and Harriet with a touch of The Addams Family) as well as the creepy, condescending funeral director Liberace played in The Loved One isn't just a matter of dimension. Daigo, his boss, Mr. Sasaki, and the secretary live as outsiders in an existential truth that most people experience only fleetingly. They know their place, in their provincial Japanese world, and in the universe at large. In one scene, old Mr. Sasaki verbalizes a reality we don't like to think about, much less discuss: The dead sustain the living, whether you're munching on fried chicken or making your living off burial. Sasaki found his calling upon the death of his wife; he performed the ceremony himself and discovered the comfort he derived by sending her into her coffin looking fresh and beautiful.
The viewer experiences Daigo's growing awareness with him; at first, the unhappy young man is seen in close-ups and mid-range shots, as if trapped inside himself. Increasingly, the film favors overhead shots that show him as part of his landscape. Finally, he plays cello in the vast outdoors with snow-capped mountains in the distance – he's out of himself and has joined the world, by performing end-of-life baptisms, washing away a lifetime’s intense mileage. Ultimately, the film reminds you that helping someone die is as important as helping someone be born. Daigo’s profession demands a sensitivity to loss that can only come from those who have known it themselves.
Few films deal with death as honestly and resourcefully as this one, which is released on DVD Jan. 12. So unexpected are its accomplishments, the film can barely be envisioned until it's seen. It explores the Far East custom of “casketing” - a ceremonial preparation of the body, witnessed by friends and family, that includes bathing and makeup application, performed with a formality that assures no flesh other than face, hands and feet is exposed. In some moments, the ritual resembles tucking somebody into bed for the night. Once handled by relatives, casketing has become a niche profession that undertakers outsource, but it is slow to be respected. In fact, the film itself might seem too contemplative and full of corpses for a mainstream public. Yet it has achieved classic status in Japan, where it has grossed $61 million. In my circle of moviegoers, the film inspires initial resistance and then multiple viewings. You often hear people recommending it, saying, “Don't worry, it's funny.” And parts of it are.Director Yōjirō Takita meets viewers more than halfway. The script is masterfully constructed, the acting animated. One of the most emblematic scenes arrives at the beginning and out of chronological order, teasing what's to come. A handsome young newcomer to casketing is washing the body of a beautiful young woman under the dignified cover of an outer garment, when he hits an unexplained snag. Discreetly, he defers to his older boss, who quietly sizes up the situation: The corpse is, in fact, male. Facing a gallery of mourners, the boss gently asks the working-class parents if they want the deceased to wear male or female makeup. The comic eruption is worthy of an “Ask Judy” column.
Then the film backtracks to a different world: A mediocre symphony orchestra in Tokyo is being shut down, leaving the young burial specialist of the first scene - cellist Daigo Kobayashi (played by Masahiro Motoki) - out of a job and deeply in debt from the purchase of a cello on which he has pinned his hopes for an international career. Knowing that he's not good enough, he and his effervescent wife, Mika (Ryoko Hirosue), retire to his small, mountainside home town and the house in which he grew up – empty since his mother’s death. Soon, we see the psychic damage Daigo suffered when, at age 6, his father (whose cello recordings are still in the house) ran off with another woman. Daigo answers a misprinted job ad he believes to be for the travel business – the ad mentions “departures” - but he finds himself in the casketing profession.
Daigo's first job involves an elderly woman who has been lying dead in her apartment for two weeks. The neophyte learns how to function and then retreats to a public bathhouse where he nearly scrubs himself to death. Too nauseous to eat dinner, he has a fit of weeping and, in a hormonal rebellion against the death he has witnessed, desperately makes love to his wife. But when she learns of his new line of work, she walks out. “You're unclean!” she says. Childhood friends shun him as well.
Here, all the film's components are set in motion for a unique journey. Daigo discovers his childhood cello in the house, broods over his father’s disappearance and stares into the river for hours, watching salmon attempting to swim upstream and seeing how many of them die trying. That, in effect, is what Daigo is doing: A secretive man who carries the weight of the world, he tried to pursue a great music career without the emotional foundation to succeed. But the love and reverence he brings to casketing are greeted by the mourners’ profound gratitude, representing a communion with the ancient culture he has eschewed. Daily encounters with death bring him to life. Some critics have complained that Daigo's return to playing cello later in the film seems digressive; in fact, it's the film's point. How can you express yourself, verbally or musically, until you know who you are?The contrast between the casketing crew of Departures and Six Feet Under's loopy funeral family (Ozzie and Harriet with a touch of The Addams Family) as well as the creepy, condescending funeral director Liberace played in The Loved One isn't just a matter of dimension. Daigo, his boss, Mr. Sasaki, and the secretary live as outsiders in an existential truth that most people experience only fleetingly. They know their place, in their provincial Japanese world, and in the universe at large. In one scene, old Mr. Sasaki verbalizes a reality we don't like to think about, much less discuss: The dead sustain the living, whether you're munching on fried chicken or making your living off burial. Sasaki found his calling upon the death of his wife; he performed the ceremony himself and discovered the comfort he derived by sending her into her coffin looking fresh and beautiful.
The viewer experiences Daigo's growing awareness with him; at first, the unhappy young man is seen in close-ups and mid-range shots, as if trapped inside himself. Increasingly, the film favors overhead shots that show him as part of his landscape. Finally, he plays cello in the vast outdoors with snow-capped mountains in the distance – he's out of himself and has joined the world, by performing end-of-life baptisms, washing away a lifetime’s intense mileage. Ultimately, the film reminds you that helping someone die is as important as helping someone be born. Daigo’s profession demands a sensitivity to loss that can only come from those who have known it themselves.
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