After Life

Rating:
Summary: ...ponder your own existence while breathing.
Review: After Life is a thought provoking film that depicts 22 individuals who have been sent to a place between the living and the hereafter. This place functions as a reflective and meditative station where three counselors are to guide the 22 characters through questions to remember their most enjoyable moment while alive. However, there is one stipulation to this task for each individual, which limits their contemplation of their memories to three days. The following step for the three counselors is to recreate the memory of each individual through shooting a film that resembles their fond memory. After Life is shot with a grainy texture and the cinematography reminds the audience of the spontaneous camera movement of documentary styled films. This is a part of Koreeda's deliberate direction as he wants to depict his brilliant vision and persuade the audience to ponder their own existence while breathing.

Rating:
Summary: Reflections of a Quiet Tenderness
Review: Early memories of director Hirokazu Kore-Eda's childhood include witnessing his grandfather's experiences bearing the symptoms of Alzheimer's disease. At the time, he formed the impression that losing one's memories was a normal part of the journey towards the fact of bodily death.

Kore-Eda, with this film, has transformed such painful memories, through the artistic process, into a timeless story which helps to honor the simple epiphanies of our daily life.

Watching "After Life" partly serves as a guided meditation, which allows one to reflect on cherished events within one's own archive of life memories. Primarily, because it helps to provide the proper context for such reflections, which might otherwise be delayed or neglected in some way.

"On Earth, as it is in Heaven" is a sentiment that requires some degree of intimacy to express amidst the various responsibilities and concerns of life on this planet. So take some time to watch this film. Hopefully, it will speak to your heart in ways that are not often addressed within our contemporary society.

Fans of the film "After Life" may also want to look into reading "The Book of Heaven: An Anthology of Writings from Ancient to Modern Times", which was compiled by editors Carol and Philip Zaleski for Oxford University Press. "The Book of Heaven" covers similar subject matter in a way that straggles the line between the reverent and a sensibility of impish, mischievous humor.

Rating:
Summary: Turning into a single precious memory...Heaven?
Review: "You'll be staying with us for one week. Everyone gets a private room. Just relax and enjoy yourself. But while you're here, there is one thing you must do. From the entire <X> years of your life, we need you to select one memory. One memory that was most meaningful or precious to you. There is a time limit. You have three days to decide. When you've chosen your memory, our staff will do their best to recreate if on film. On Saturday, we'll screen the film for you. As soon as you've relived your memory, you will move on, taking only that memory with you."

Whoa, how's that for a premise and assignment in this documentary-style movie? That's what the staff of the limbo between death and the afterlife tell the arrivals who have died the previous day. The staff includes the boss Nakamura and counselors Mochizuki, a sensitive soul, it turns out, Sugite, and Kawashima. There's also Shiori, a sullen young woman who assists Mochizuki, as well as others. They are hard-working and detail-oriented, trying to get the day, season, weather, atmosphere, environment, all so it can be duplicated on film. And the evening conferences they have with their Nakamura shows the great Japanese work ethic and empowerment the staff have. The courtesy and patience towards the deceased shown by the staff was really wonderful.

The set-up's not glamorous-a spartan old schoolhouse with falling paint, none of your pearly gates and St. Peter peering at the Heaven or Hell registry through his specs. There's also some nearby woods and a studio for filming.

I was saddened by the number of young people who died. 35, 29, there was even one schoolgirl in her teens who initially chose Disney's Splash Mountain. Which made me think, what happened to them? How did they die? Did that girl commit suicide, get into an accident, get murdered? Certain others, like the pleasant Tatori Kimiko, who died aged 78, seem to have lived fuller lives and a greater appreciation for it.

There are some problem people. One of Mochizuki's clients is Watanabe Ichiro, someone who died aged 71 and has the staff order videotapes of his life for him to peruse so he can pick his memory. His request delays things a bit. Another is an old lady who looks like a dumpling and seems to be in her own little world.

The most interesting is the 21-year old Iseya, who confounds the staff by refusing to choose a memory as a way to take responsibility. He even spins a post-structuralist philosophy in giving his reason why he should be able to choose a dream and explains why I wouldn't want to choose either. "Ultimately, we end up turning memories into our own images. Of course it really happened, so it feels very real." But in creating his own futuristic dream like a film, with imagined situations, "would be a lot more meaningful than looking back at my past. So this look back at the past, living with a single moment from my past would be too painful for me." He even has the chutzpah to say that their system is the problem, not him. Yeah, I'd rather choose fantasies or dreams, but it reveals how objective the staff are, striving for accuracy, getting actual memories, the primary sources, to use a historic research term, and not fiction. But what if one isn't able to choose? That is explained but that'd be a spoiler.

Most people don't live extraordinary lives. Face it, we all can't make great albums like the White Album, get married to a hot film star, or gloat in the wake of a seven figure salary. And that about sums up all the people portrayed here. For them, they choose simple things, things appealing to the senses. What does that play for those trying to find out the meaning of life?

An intriguing premise and idea, well executed, and very thought-provoking. As Peter Davison says in Dr. Who-The Five Doctors: "A man is the sum of his memories, you know." The difference with Afterlife is that a person becomes the zenith of one's memories. If it's possible for one like me who's had a rotten life to take that one memory and forget everything else, wouldn't that indeed be Heaven?