Would you confront death?

Have you experienced the loss of someone close to you?

I have, and death that once was foreign, detached and far away, is now a part of my life. Death came with unexpected responsibilities, reconciliations and retreats from my dreams. Departures beautifully delivers a story about the meaning of the death for the living, which opens up an interesting perspective to see death as something “normal.”

The film begins with the main character, Daigo, performing a calm and delicate “encoffinment” ceremony for a beautiful young woman prior to her cremation. Slowly, within every dainty tune of the soundtrack, the story flips and reveals how fate has brought Daigo, from an orchestra’s cellist to a gatekeeper between life and death.

When his orchestra disperses, Daigo is forced to come back to his hometown. To live in the house he inherited from his mother. To take the first job he finds. Diego was hoping that his new job would be something related to travel business because the ads mentioned something about “departures.” It is, in a slightly different way, it is traveling to another life.

His new employer is an encoffiner; he prepares the deceased for cremation by cleaning them up, dressing and applying makeup on them. However, the job does more than just that; an encoffiner acts as a sort of conduit between the death and the living. Through teething troubles -that are unexpectedly hilarious and touching in an equal measure – Daigo finds that he has a flair for the job. While performing peaceful rituals of purifying and presenting the deceased, he gains a greater appreciation for life.

Though so, the stigma attached to dealing with the dead discourages Daigo to tell his wife the truth about his new job. Together with the guilt over his dead mother and the absence of his father, these problems rack him.

Departures are like an observation of life left by the dead for the contemplation of the survivors. As Daigo’s employer said about his wife’s death: “I knew one of us would leave first, but it was hard to be the one who’s left behind.”

Death is an unsettling matter. However, strangely comic and sturdily solemn, Departures helps us to understand that death’s arrival brings about lamentation and laughter. A careful arrangement of romance, humour and desolation in the film manages to generate laughter and tears, within a short space.

We all know that one day, we have to “travel” to our final destination. So, while we’re waiting for our “departure”, I’d recommend you to sit back and enjoy this movie.

"Departures" is rated PG-13
Directed by Yojiro Takita
Written by Kundo Koyama
130 minutes