WANDAFURU RAIFU
AFTER LIFE Written and Directed by Hirokazu Kore-eda With Takashi Mochizuki, Taketoshi Naito Plan B not rated 118 min
One of the most endearing and enduring subgenres of cinema is the peek behind the curtain to a glimpse of the Great Beyond. The way we choose to imagine the hereafter tells us a few things about ourselves, and for the most part we seem to prefer a prosaic, familiar feel to it. For a Crossing the Bar Film Festival at home, check the video store for some of the following: "Green Pastures" (1936), "Our Town" (1940), "Here Comes Mr. Jordan" (1941) -- remade as "Heaven Can Wait" (1978), "Stairway to Heaven" (1946), "Truly, Madly, Deeply" (1990), "Defending Your Life" (1991)...the list goes on and on, and most of them are wonderful.
Which brings us to the latest, a Japanese film called, in Japanese, "Wandafuru Raifu" ("Wonderful Life") and released here as "After Life". Writer-director Kore-eda's set-up here is a processing station at which the newly-dead are politely interviewed by young bureaucrats sitting at desks in a dingy office building, and asked to think of one memory that they would like to take with them into eternity. Once they have chosen, all other memories of their lives will be erased. The memory is then recreated by the staff on film, using props and makeshift sets that resemble the resources of a very down-at-the-heels summer stock company. Everything about this production is simple and bare-bones, and this leaves room for the complexity to express itself in the film's ideas.
How do you settle on the one memory? It's a hell of a choice, and after watching this movie's wonderful characters grin and scratch their heads and wrack their brains to come up with the right choice, you'll find yourself playing the game for the rest of the evening on your own.
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