AFTER LIFE (WANDAFURU RAIFU) (Artistic License) Starring: Arata, Erika Oda, Taketoshi Naito, Susumu Terajima. Screenplay: Hirokazu Koreeda. Producers: Masayuki Akieda and Shiho Sato. Director: Hirokazu Koreeda. MPAA Rating: Unrated (adult themes) Running Time: 118 minutes. In Japanese with English subtitles. Reviewed by Scott Renshaw.
Hirokazu Koreeda's AFTER LIFE is a film that stirs the imagination instantly -- which is fortunate, because the overflow of good will has to carry through an ill-conceived conclusion. The provocative premise combines the post-mortem bureaucracy of DEFENDING YOUR LIFE with a conversation from CITY SLICKERS about the best days of one's life. In a sort of celestial way-station, the recently departed are asked to identify the best memory of their lives, the moment in which they were happiest and most content. After interviews with case workers, those memories are turned into films, which will accompany the deceased as their sole memory into the next world.
The first half of AFTER LIFE sticks close to the interviews, drawn by Koreeda from real conversations (in fact, several of the interviewees are non-professionals relating actual events from their own lives). The memories about which they speak are intriguing enough in their own right -- some with tales about childhood innocence, others with accounts of adult adventures -- to spark reflections by viewers about their own favored recollections. More intriguing still is AFTER LIFE's exploration of the nature of memory as a combination of things as they were and things as we wish they could have been. One woman, a former prostitute, recalls a blissful encounter with a man in a hotel, until she reluctantly acknowledges that the man never showed up. Even the conceit of creating a film version of an imperfect memory -- rather than using the archived videotapes of people's lives available to the case workers -- emphasizes the power of filtered, romanticized remembrance.
For over an hour, AFTER LIFE delights with reflections on what we remember and how we remember it, letting the steady stream of interviews flow over the loose narrative structure. Then, out of freaking nowhere, Koreeda decides AFTER LIFE needs to be about someone in particular. The focus shifts from the scope of human experience to one case worker, Mochizuki (Arata), working with one recent arrival, 70-year-old Mr. Watanabe (Taketoshi Naito). In the course of helping Watanabe -- who considers his life so mundane that there's not a moment worth remembering -- Mochizuki struggles with unresolved issues from his own life. There's also Mochizuki's apprentice/assistant Shiori (Erika Oda), who has romantic feelings for Mochizuki and wanders wistfully through the streets of Tokyo taking snapshots. After spending most of the film as effective supporting players, the Rosencrantzes and Guildensterns of AFTER LIFE cold-cock this "Hamlet" and make it all about them.
There's nothing inherently wrong with a movie about the longings of otherworldly guides, unless you count the fact that it's already been done a few times. But AFTER LIFE shouldn't have been one of those movies, since it already had so much going for it as meditation on transcendent life experiences. There's a strange appeal to the production's heaven-as-low-budget-independent-film-set look, and plenty more appeal to the tales of the deceased. It's hard not to suspect that AFTER LIFE would have made an extraordinary documentary, since Koreeda's steady, concentrated medium shots of the characters describing their memories are so effective. Maybe then Koreeda wouldn't have been tempted to leave the strengths of his film -- which are plenty strong -- for the supernatural melodrama of long-lost loves. In my memory, this one will linger as a good film that could have been great.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 flings of desire: 7.
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