Departures of Yojiro Takita
Synopsis After the dissolution of the orchestra where he played as a cellist in Tokyo, Daigo Kobayashi Yamagata returns with his wife in a rural province in the north of Japan. Looking for a new job, Daigo responds to an ad for an "aid to the departure" convinced that this is a travel agency. In reality realizes that he has to do with the funeral agency. Driven by economic necessity, however, accepted Daigo the place. Immersed in this world unknown to him, the former musician discovers everything about the funeral rituals, continuing to hide his wife the true nature of his work.
Departures was one of the most pleasant surprises of last season's films. Built in 2008, winner of 'Best Foreign Language Film Oscar the following year (this year's prize went to the secret of his eyes, playing at the end of the bill) in Italy came out as usual with a delay abysmal, thanks to the work of the small production company Tucker, born from the collaboration between the circle of the cinema WCC Cinemazero of Udine and Pordenone, who has been organizing in the vital FarEastFestival Friuli, where the film is over.
Contrary to expectations, however, the film was a success, especially in that segment of the audience of adult men and women, but not that much older, more and more agencies often tend to forget the market and which the times are likely to reverse market expectations. On the theme of the film, perhaps, of the delicacy with which it is treated, the finesse with which it is set up an exhibition of cultural anthropology disguised as a narrative People: the fact is that Departures (means "death", departments, and it is unclear why the hell have decided not to translate it) is one of the most successful arthouse films of recent times, a little movie that unexpectedly is large and touches the hearts of many unexpected visitors (at home and has grossed more than 60 million and defeated the Israeli Oscar Waltz with Bashir, which, however, told mo 'of the way, deserved much more ...).
Alberto Crespi has written on the drive, Departures "is a film about death so peaceful," but above all builds a story that has a central theme in death, but that is its breadth of breath many times, "the contrast of city / state and modernity / tradition, the acceptance of death as a last moment of life, the essence of the Rite in Japanese culture. "
Here and there, slowed by the desire to lighten the story and not un'estetizzazione request of the Japanese countryside, Departures is an acute observation about death and the relationship we build with it. The death is for the living, not death, the film seems to say. But above all, death is close to the body of the remains, makes its presence forces us to look at concrete and eyes, to wash, clean, shaved, coating, through the still warm body of one who is gone. The work of the protagonist is that of a ferryman, that is the one who helps the dead to appear in good condition in the presence of the afterlife, but most importantly it is a secular priest, acceptance of suffering. 'The living beings eat dead creatures to live. The exception is plants, "he says his teacher, and therefore the body is a necessary and unavoidable presence in our lives, a reality that Western culture tries to avoid perhaps, worse still mystify, and that is in the East high through the delicate ritual of dressing and makeup.
In this sense, Departures is a film that celebrates the trick as a necessary form of protection against the reality of life and the inevitable presence of death, because the relationship the protagonist has with her work, with its delicacy and its depth, helps him to rediscover the meaning of life and lost at the same time helping people and assisting in the face of attending a macabre and moving his show to accept death through the acceptance of the joys and sorrows of life . Therefore, a film that is praise of cosmetics, makeup, and by extension the film itself: a film of the past, narrative, legends, symbols in a little ' bold or naive, but sincere in his own way, made to the general public and the general public rightly rewarded.
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