Early feature from Japanese writer/director Hirokazu Kore-eda, already showing masterful control & balance, is a charmed fable about the path to eternity. A land-mined field if ever there was one.* Set in a dilapidated workplace (a former school or factory?) where a motley group of recently dead meet for instruction on their ‘future.’ Given three days to find the one memory in their lives they’d take with them to the beyond, the deceased, young & old, are assisted in their search by seasoned ‘helpers’ stuck in coaching positions thru their own inability to choose that one pure recollection. Tough, funny and remarkably clear-headed, the film could profitably lose a reel, but is otherwise all but faultless as the dead seek their unique life-defining moment before helping to recreate it on film for a final group screening before . . . Well, that we aren’t told. But we do witness a revelation when one of the aides makes a connection that lets him realize his own epiphany, his moment of clarity. A decision that finally lets him take his leave, saddening a fellow helper yet to find her moment. But soon the week has come to an end and a new class will need help from the slowly rotating staff of experts. Simply handled technically, what an eye for still composition Kore-eda has; wonderfully acted; Kore-eda sets the bar in taste, tone and well earned sentiment very high, but knows what he’s doing.
DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: *The passage to the hereafter a surprisingly popular subject, particularly during wartime. Try this two-for-one package that did service in both WW I and II, first as an Early Talkie - OUTWARD BOUND/’30, then, more polished if less touching, remade as BETWEEN TWO WORLDS/’44. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2020/10/outward-bound-1930-between-two-worlds.html
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