:
Arata,
Arata,
Erika Oda,
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:
Hirokazu Kore-eda,
Hirokazu Kore-eda
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: New Yorker Video
: Drama, Foreign, Japan, Fantasy
: 118 min.
: Japanese
: English
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Like his previous drama Maborosi (1995), Hirokazu Kore-eda's After Life is a brilliant meditation on death and memory. The premise of After Life is simple: over the span of a week, twenty-two souls arrive at a way station (which looks like an old junior high school) between life and death, where they are asked to choose just one memory to take into the afterlife. The new arrivals include an elderly woman, a rebellious dropout, a teenage girl, and a 70-year-old war veteran. Once they have chosen a memory, it is recreated and filmed by the staff of the way station, using all the tricks and illusions of cinema: cotton balls are used to mimic clouds, a fan is used for a summer breeze. In preparation for this project, Kore-eda interviewed 500 people from all walks of life about their memories. The film freely cuts between footage of these interviews, actors improvising, and actors reading scripts. Just as Kore-eda fuses documentary elements with a fictional narrative, we see over the course of the film how memories are distorted, improved on, and revised; and it is these subjectively constructed memories that the new arrivals value most. This film is not a typical Hollywood feel-good film; but its unhurried pace and lack of melodrama, like its subject, may linger in the memory long afterwards. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide
Special Features:
- Japanese & American Trailers
- Production Notes
- Director's Profile
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| "Human Emotions Are The Sparks That Fly When 'Truth' and 'Fiction' Collide"
by WimsWings
April 6, 2007 - 1:53 AM PDT
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3 out of 3 members found this review helpful
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Getting caught up in the "why" of the director's austere turnstile of a hereafter - versus a more fluttery, white-draped end point - is to miss out on the film's generous, moving spirit. After Life is not a prolonged exegesis (in spite of its title) and, in fact, has much in common with other heartful, memory-pinned stories, like Michel Gondry's Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and, more recently, The Science of Sleep. The relationship between the assigned case worker and his charge made the distinction, albeit in a more emotional way, between subjective memory (sometimes affectionate fiction) and what really did occur. I loved when it came time to finally film the chosen memories, the compassionate, attentive delight of the crew in duplicating an afternoon bus ride or assembling a pleasing bank of clouds.
That said, the availability of After Life is wholly responsible for my GreenCine membership. I missed out on the film's initial Film Forum engagement and, since then, have been looking for the title on every rental shelf. Happily, I received it in my mailbox almost immediately after adding it to my queue. What a delight to finally find this lovely film. |
| Boring mostly. But a nice thought
by KNanan
July 24, 2005 - 8:08 PM PDT
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1 out of 9 members found this review helpful
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anybody who liked this movie probably fell asleep and dreamed a better movie. harsh to say. but i admit there were some good scenes. mostly it was boring.
the acting wasn't bad. what i didn't like was how they didn't make heaven a little more ethereal like. im not asking for a city in the clouds with angels and banners hovering about it. but that place in the Afterlife looked like a normal plain building that didn't have anything to do with the afterlife. another thing that annoyed me was how they had to choose one memory. and the people there recreated it. but if those guys were angels why would the have to recreate the memory. couldn't they take it from someone's head? i rather they did. because the parts with them remaking a memory was boring. and the parts with the people telling their memories were boring. some of it was enjoyable. but i wish they had some more action going on or some background music. maybe a scene with them playing a pinball machine. or joking around. anything that wasn't work related.. something amusing. not dragged out.
this movie was longer than it had to be.but it did have some interesting parts. personally i wish it wasn't so unfair. the whole "choosing one memory to replay a million times in your head for eternity." but it had an okay ending. a slight unexpected event. |
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GreenCine Member Rating
(Average 7.66)
152 Votes
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