Movie Review

Afterlife

by Doug Hodgkinson

Directed by Kore-eda Hirokazu, Japanese with English subtitles, starring: Erica Oda, Susimu Terjima, Tikashi Maito, (Special Selection; Sundance and Toronto Film Festivals 1999), 118 minutes, 2008.

What, for you, is your life's most memorable moment, a memory that you would like to preserve for all time? This is the premise of the story in this haunting film that invites us to find life's worth and meaning in a single event.

Individuals who have died arrive in what appears to be an abandoned building and they are informed that they will stay there for a week. They are given three days in which to decide what was a memorable moment for them in their lives. The "staff" will then attempt, as best they can, to recreate that moment on film. Following the screening, all other memories will be deleted and their afterlife will consist of that memory. Of course, one would hope to choose a happy moment for eternal memory but that is not always the case.

Staff members work with their "cases" to help them recall and flesh out their moments. They meet in the staff lounge to talk about their cases and, as in any 'agency' there are differing views on how events are to be interpreted and how they can be portrayed on film.

Amongst the 'cases' are people who cannot or will not decide. Some are tortured with bad memories; some think their lives are too ordinary to have any memorable moments; others recite a mind numbing stream of triviality; while others take a charming delight in 'simple' moments; a red dress worn as a child, the breeze on one's face while riding the trolley to school, a trip to Disneyland.

Two of the young staff (Oda, Terjima) are people stuck in memory and unable to move on, though they are also stalling because they know that if they decide on a memory they will have to part. This seems to be a form of Purgatory, continually to work at "head office" helping others with their memories but not able to resolve one's own memorable moment. (It is amusing to think of the "eternal processing centre" as a huge NFB film library with racks of dusty film canisters containing scenes from people's lives.) The young man has discovered that one of his clients was the husband of a woman who had been the young man's fiancé before he was killed during WW2. His female companion at head office finds the film canister that records his fiancé's memory, which turns out to be a scene with him before they parted and he went to war. This frees him to record the same scene and leave, much to the chagrin of his co-worker who will now be wiped from his memory.

This is a delightful and clever movie which gives a provocative image of what The Afterlife might consist of; a memorable moment of our lives, of our own choosing, preserved as the only memory for us to enjoy for eternity. Choose carefully. Don't be hasty!

On the other hand, as a way of making the meaning of our lives to this point more apparent and, …well… memorable, why wait?