Starring: Masahiro Motoki, Tsutomu Yamazaki, Ryoko Hirosue Director: Yojiro Takita Category: IIA (Japanese)
'Death is a gate,' says one of the protagonists in Departures. In Yojiro Takita's film, which won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film this year, it's much more than just an opening for souls to pass through - from death emerges a movie oozing mawkish drama and feel-good endings, with the tale of an urban-dwelling musician's rebirth as a small-town mortician anchoring a tear-jerker.
The film's title refers to the key word in a recruitment advert in a newspaper that catches the eye of Daigo (Masahiro Motoki) as he searches for a job after relocating with his wife, Mika (Ryoko Hirosue), to his hometown in the rural northwestern Japanese prefecture of Yamagata.
The Tokyo orchestra in which Daigo played has disbanded and during the interview for a new job that involves preparing people for 'departures', he discovers that, rather than sending tourists off on exotic holidays, his role is to help prepare the dead for ceremonial send-offs to the netherworld.
Thus begins a trek across a formulaic culture-shock landscape as Daigo struggles with what he initially regards as a morbid and unclean profession, his city-slicker cynicism gradually dissipating as he witnesses the comfort his mentor, the stoical Sasaki (Tsutomu Yamazaki, above right, with Motoki), provides to relatives of the deceased with his graceful 'encoffinement'.
But there's more on Daigo's plate than just overcoming his prejudices: there's the challenge of first concealing his job from Mika and then convincing her that it is more than just necrophilia in disguise. Daigo also must deal with sceptical townsfolk, who eventually develop some sympathy for him in his new line of work.
