I admit it, this one snuck up on me. I am pleasantly surprised by this unusual recent film from Japan, the 2008 Academy Award winner for Best Foreign Language Film. In it’s own quiet way, the filmmaker looks with compassion and respect at some of the most important transitions we each must face, while also capturing the flavor of rural Japanese sensibility very well.
Departures begins as the simple story of a young man in Tokyo who loses his job as a cellist, deciding that he just isn’t talented enough to make it as a musician. He decides to move back to the rural village that he grew up in, because his mother has died recently and left him her house. He packs up his young wife and moves back to the country.
Mostly by chance and even mistake, he finds a job as someone who lovingly prepares the dead for departure into the next world. Traditionally in Japan, the families of the dead would have done this chore themselves, but apparently there is such a skilled professional who ritualistically cleanses, grooms, and dresses the body and then applies the necessary make-up, all in front of the family of the deceased.
Through the vehicle of this young man’s struggles with an admittedly strange career choice, and the “family” he inherits with his new job, he comes to deal with the loss of both his mother and estranged father, as well as the imminent birth of his new child.
Most around him, including his young wife, discourage him from his new chosen vocation, saying that working with the dead is shameful and unclean. They find his work despicable, until they themselves need his services. Then they have heart-felt appreciation for how he performs his duties with the upmost respect, honor and skill.
Death, lost love, job loss, bringing new life into the world, and finding right livelihood are all dealt with masterfully in this quiet, thoughtful film. Give it an hour or so of your time, and you will be drawn into this young man’s strange world and the simple, beautiful aesthetic of rural Japanese life.
To learn more about what I learned through my own transitions, please read my books: Midlife Magic: Becoming the person you are inside! and my Midife Change Workbook.
