"Departures"

 

We rented and watched Departures Saturday night. Quoting liberally from the official plot summary:

"Departures" follows Daigo Kobayashi, a devoted cellist in an orchestra that has just been dissolved and who is suddenly left without a job. Daigo decides to move back to his old hometown with his wife to look for work and start over. He answers a classified ad entitled "Departures" thinking it is an advertisement for a travel agency only to discover that the job is actually for a "Nokanshi" or "encoffineer," a funeral professional who prepares deceased bodies for burial and entry into the next life. While his wife and others despise the job, Daigo takes a certain pride in his work and begins to perfect the art of "Nokanshi," acting as a gentle gatekeeper between life and death, between the departed and the family of the departed.

There is, of course, much more to be said about what happened but suffice it to say I found the film extremely well done if a bit slow. The lack of rapid-fire action and the slow cuts gave us time to ponder the emotions to which the film gave rise as well as simply to better understand the meaning of Japanese funerary customs.

Emphasizing the missing humanity of our responses to death, if not to death itself, is a needed tonic for Western-influenced cultures. The public care, respect, and honor Daigo and his mentor pay to the deceased jars those fully acculturated to the single virtue of efficiency. The opportunity of the watching families to participate, if only in a limited way or at least vicariously, in the careful washing and preparation of the body for "encoffinment" appropriately focuses attention on the deceased and provides opportunity for reconciliation.

This theme is reinforced first in Daigo's post-postmortem reconciliation with the father who had deserted him many years before his death, and again in the final scene with wife Miko, who only slowly came to see that Daigo's vocation was honorable.

Departures gently and beautifully reinforced the transitory nature of life, the obligation of the living to honor the dead (including their bodies), and the doctrine of vocation. All three resonate with the Christian faith. Indeed, these doctrines were reinforced when listening the next morning to a sermon from 2 Corinthians 5:1-4. Let's hope that all cultures, including the American Christian subculture, takes note.