Film
After Life
- Director
- Hirokazu Kore-eda
- Certificate
- PG
- Running Time
- 118 mins
It’s an irresistible parlour game premise: if you could only take a single memory with you when you die, which one would it be? The great strength of Hirokazu Kore-eda‘s warm and humane film, apart from its scrupulous avoidance of sentimentality and cheesy religious bollocks, is that it develops this one-note concept into an engrossing story with a clever, touching, non-melodramatic last reel revelation.
An ordinary, somewhat dilapidated institutional building somewhere in the countryside. Out of a bright white light shining through an open doorway step a procession of ordinary Japanese: old and young, male and female. They give their names to the receptionist and are directed to a waiting room. When a full batch of 22 are gathered, each is summoned and assigned a counsellor whose task it is to tell them that they’ve just died and to explain what happens next. The stories they’ve been told about Heaven and Hell are rubbish. When they die, everybody ends up in this waystation for a week before proceeding to the ‘next level’. Over the ensuing three days they must choose a memory to take with them. The staff will then recreate this memory as accurately as possible on film. Everything else will then be wiped from their minds.
Hirokazu Kore-eda isn’t interested in the origin of this puzzling exercise, nor in addressing its logical inconsistencies, though the mystery of the reception staff provides a twist that it would be unfair to reveal. For all its high concept, After Life, like the director’s earlier deathfest Mabarosi, is as much concerned with the living as it is with the dead. As the goners reflect on their lives in search of special moments of happiness, they find the selection isn’t as obvious as it might at first have seemed. The staff hold regular meetings to discuss progress and resolve such dilemmas as whether to allow a teenage girl to be stuck for all eternity with a memory of a Disneyland ride, and what to do with sour old ex-nine-to-fiver Mr. Watanabe, who’s declared that his entire life was a disappointment. And just to make it even more interesting, an undisclosed number of the ‘deceased’ are real people talking about real memories. No Hollywood vulgarity or special effects here; just a provocative, enthralling launchpad for audience reflection on its kaleidoscope of themes.
It’s back on screen in the Watershed’s comprehensive Of Flesh & Blood: The Cinema of Hirokazu Kore-eda season.
Our newsletters emailed directly to you
