A run down school, a seemingly random group of people conducting awkward interviews with new arrivals seems an odd way to look at the afterlife, but Kore-eda has created something really special with this film. He somehow makes an enormously unlikely scenario for purgatory - where the dead are asked to select the memory they wish to hold onto forever, and (most unlikely!), this is recreated by a ramshackle low budget film crew, and turns it into something profound and beautiful.
The film is a truly remarkable ensemble effort - there are no real stars in this film (despite a beautiful minor part from that truly great actress, Kyoko Kagawa), even the most minor characters (including an adorable old lady in the throes of a mercifully pleasant dementia) are given their own time and space and are depicted wonderfully. Dull looking salarimen who struggle to find memories that are worth keeping are shown to have lives of real depth and quality. A schoolgirl is dissuaded from a clichéd remembrance of a nice day in Disneyland, and instead remembers a beautiful moment with her mother. A mouthy, sex obsessed older man is shown to be boastful simply as a way of hiding the real love he has for his daughter.
The film is obviously open to all sorts of interpretations, but for what its worth it seems to me to be about the importance of those small moments of joy, of grace, that make life worth living. Interestingly, he implies that those moments don't necessarily have to have really happened - it is the memory that is important, not the reality. Just one moment of ecstasy is maybe just enough for a life worth living.
The film sounds quirky and slow, and it is paced at the speed of life - slow, but all too fast at the end. But it is never less than engrossing and in the end, beautiful and moving. Kore- edas films are not disposable entertainment, they are real art of the type that will stay with you forever if you allow them to wash over you. Try it, you won't regret it.
The film is a truly remarkable ensemble effort - there are no real stars in this film (despite a beautiful minor part from that truly great actress, Kyoko Kagawa), even the most minor characters (including an adorable old lady in the throes of a mercifully pleasant dementia) are given their own time and space and are depicted wonderfully. Dull looking salarimen who struggle to find memories that are worth keeping are shown to have lives of real depth and quality. A schoolgirl is dissuaded from a clichéd remembrance of a nice day in Disneyland, and instead remembers a beautiful moment with her mother. A mouthy, sex obsessed older man is shown to be boastful simply as a way of hiding the real love he has for his daughter.
The film is obviously open to all sorts of interpretations, but for what its worth it seems to me to be about the importance of those small moments of joy, of grace, that make life worth living. Interestingly, he implies that those moments don't necessarily have to have really happened - it is the memory that is important, not the reality. Just one moment of ecstasy is maybe just enough for a life worth living.
The film sounds quirky and slow, and it is paced at the speed of life - slow, but all too fast at the end. But it is never less than engrossing and in the end, beautiful and moving. Kore- edas films are not disposable entertainment, they are real art of the type that will stay with you forever if you allow them to wash over you. Try it, you won't regret it.