Viewings from the sofa: ‘Departures’

“Now grown cold, but restored to beauty for eternity. This was done with a calmness, a precision and, above all, a gentle affection. At the final parting sending the dead on their way, everything done peacefully and beautifully.”

From ‘Departures’ on preparing the dead for cremation.

Sadly missing out on seeing Yojiro Takita’s ‘Departures’ in the cinema when it came out in 2008 (the film also deservedly won an Oscar for the best foreign film in 2009) I made a mental note to see it when it came out on DVD. Mental note was sadly lost in the sea of other titles I wanted to see; a common curse of a greedy cinephile. But a combination of randomly coming across it on Love Film online and my friend’s enthusiastic e-mail upon seeing it herself, finally led me to ‘Departures’.

Death never seemed to be taboo back in the Balkans where I hail from and like many other kids I skimmed through the daily newspaper back to front and spent more time reading obituaries than any other section. My grandmother would cut our friends’ and family’s ‘departure’ announcements and kept them in her notebook. When she passed away I cut out hers. Also I have been to my fare share of funerals since I was a child and have seen dead people (not like the kid from ‘The Sixth Sense’) up close in open coffins. I would observe them with childlike curiosity, and remember thinking how they looked waxy and wooden and nothing like they did when they were alive. And certainly nothing like the ‘departed’ in ‘Departures’. With all that formal training I had no problem watching this beautiful, poignant and very moving film but I had a strong feeling the fountain works would be turned up to 11. And so they were.

The script for ‘Departures’ was based on ‘Coffinman: The Journal of a Buddhist Mortician’ Shinman Aoki’s autobiography and his experience of being “nokanfu, one who washes and prepares dead bodies for burial, one of the most despised professions in Japanese society” (Amazon). The coffinman in the film is Daigo, a professional musician, a Tokyo cellist who loses his job after his orchestra disbands. He soon leaves the city with his sweet, supportive wife and moves back to his hometown into a family house that his mother left him. There he starts looking for a new job and answers a misspelled ad, mistakenly thinking he is going for an interview for a job at a travel agency. It turns out that the job doesn’t involve sending people off to holiday destinations but more like to their final destinations and preparing their dead bodies in a ceremony called ‘encoffination’ which takes place in front of the family of the deceased. The pay is good, cash in hand, and Daigo reluctantly takes it and that’s where his incredible journey starts as does one of the warmest, incredibly disarming and heartfelt stories I have seen in a long time. I cried and I laughed, sometimes at the same time and the film really got to me.

‘Departures’ is in every aspect an exquisitely made film and the scenes of the encoffining are simply mesmerizing to watch. Watching craftsmen at work is one of my favourite things to see in real life and in films (one of the best things about Anton Corbijn’s ‘The American’ was George Clooney making a weapon from scratch) and ‘Departures’ opened the door to the world of the profession I didn’t know anything about. It was a real discovery and I was blown away by the intricacy of the ceremonial encoffining and the sheer elegance and dignity of the procedure. It was really moving to see Daigo’s transformation from a lost soul to a man who has found his calling in “one of the most despised professions in Japanese society” as well as accompanying him on his personal journey of soul searching and dealing with his painful past and the challenging present. But the heart of the film I found while watching the families and friends at the final goodbyes to their loved ones and many home truths coming to surface as they often do at funerals; tears and laughter, confessions, confrontations and resolutions, brought to life by death. It reinforces what we all know in our heart of hearts; that we should say what we need and want to say to the people we love when they are alive, as once they depart it’s too late.

To see the trailer click HERE