After Life

Kore-Eda uses the premise of choosing one memory for all eternity as a compelling way to explore themes of memory, closure, loss and existential meaning. The film starts out with interesting stories of unique memories recounted by actors and non-actors. A small plot develops as the story follows the case of an older, slightly arrogant retired salaryman who believes he lived a meaningful life but is having a hard time choosing his one memory. Keep in mind that people who hated this film probably prefer plot-driven dramas. "After Life" is driven by quiet observations, with a small plot driving the film's main statement.

The thing that impressed me the most was Kore-eda's representation of heaven or the after life. Kore-eda's heaven evokes and celebrates so many aspects of Japanese daily life -- the school life of children, the driving productivity of salarymen, and the quiet, contented simplicity of the elderly population. The staff of counselors at this halfway-house to eternity scrub the floors and tidy up their office first thing in the morning the way my Japanese mother remembers doing at her school in 1950s Tokyo. Like salarymen, they discuss their increasingly heavy case load and the film follows the tense timeline of their one-week deadline to recreate and film the memories. The film also captures the beauty of falling autumn leaves and sakura (cherry blossoms) through the eyes of an elderly woman with Alzheimers.

There is no idealism in Kore-eda's heaven. The staff's building looks like an old, run-down school house and the props they use to film their staged memories have a summer camp, high school production feel to it. Some of the dead change their minds about their memories, and one chooses not to pick at all. The staff is also faced with a corporate schedule and mom-and-pop resources, but things eventually fall into palce.

Oddly enough, in Kore-Eda's heaven, there is no closure. The counselors who run the place have chosen for various reasons to not pick one memory for all eternity, and they must continue on with the daily frustrations of being human. People still experience unrequited love and loneliness in heaven. Counselors pass time by reading the encyclopedia volume by volume. There seems to be little solace, except in the closure one makes for oneself by finally choosing a memory.

Kore-eda's film doesn't make any striking or profound statements about existential meaning, God or eternity. In fact, there are no evocations of God or a higher power. By singling out one memory (true or fabricated), the film almost suggests that the experience of living is really just "content" for us to draw from in deciding what the meaning of our existence has been in the end. The film benignly suggests that meaning doesn't seem to exist in its own right, it's something illusory that people create. We aren't faulted for needing illusions, it just seems to be an accepted part of our humanity.

For such a quiet film to make such compelling and powerful observations, I give it 5 stars.

If one is looking for a film with even a modicrum of action, this is not the film. For the most part this film has the feel of a documentary which, in a way, it actually is. 500 people were asked to relate what memory they would like to take to the next world, and the result is this film. In fact some of the "actors" in this film are not actors at all, but individuals expressing their favorites memories which includes an old man telling of when he was given water and rice by US soldiers, an old woman's memory of the dresses her older brother purchased her, and a young girl remembering how her mother cleaned her ears. There are also other individuals who feel as if they do not have any good memories so they have to search through their lives to find a spark of goodness.

A great film that not only touches on what is important to various human beings, but on how memory and fiction mingle.