rawlinson
Posts: 40194
Joined: 13/6/2008
From: Timbuktu. Chinese or Fictional.
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31. After-Life
Director: Hirokazu Kore-eda
Year: 1998
It's Monday morning in the halfway house between death and eternity, and the workers are expecting their latest group of clients. Every week a new batch arrives and every week the process is the same. The dead are processed, assigned a case-worker, and interviewed. They are informed that yes, they are in fact dead, and they are given their instructions for the next week. They are to take the week thinking back over their lives in search of their favourite memory. Once they've chosen one, the workers recreate the memory on film, and that's what they take with them. That one perfect memory. No Heaven, no Hell, no judgement. Just a memory. A large section of the film consists of talking heads as the dead comb their memories for the one they'd like to choose. Some leap straight to the hollow, an old man thinks of the women he's been with, a young girl thinks of Splash Mountain. But how do you choose one memory if you're in your 80s and had a happy life? How do you choose something good if all you've known is sorrow, and how do you choose something important if you die when you're too young to have experienced life?
One of the most interesting aspects of the film is the way it approaches the house itself. Instead of setting it up as some kind of spiritual sanctuary, it's slightly run-down, falling apart (the power fuses when someone uses a hair-dryer) and run like any other work place. The workers are given motivational speeches, they bitch about past clients and their attitudes, they tire of the teenage girls who all pick the same memory. They're just like regular humans. Because they once were. They were themselves once the recently deceased, but they couldn't, or wouldn't, choose a memory, so they stayed to work at the house. The film is as much about them and their relationships as it is about the new arrivals.
It's one of the most interesting cinematic takes on the afterlife, it's certainly one of the most thought-provoking. One the one hand there's something quite joyous about the idea that the survival of the soul wouldn't result in some kind of ranking system where some are punished and some rewarded, it's certainly a lot more appealing than the idea of only being given that reward if you pledge allegiance to the right deity. On the other hand, there's something quite disconcerting about boiling your entire life down to just one moment. Is what you'll keep worth everything you'll lose?
The film is shot in documentary style, helping the recollections of the dead feel natural. Also helped by the fact these are based on real memories and many of the actors were non-professionals. This approach also gives a great sense of individuality to the memories, they're never played for the effect of jerking tears from the audience, and revelations about characters come in small moments rather than big ones. Just as it should be. The last third of the film is mostly about the recreation of those memories, and at times it feels like we're watching a behind the scenes documentary about the making of a film, and that raises interesting questions about the way cinema shapes visions. Many of the great films are about the nature of memory in some form or other, from Citizen Kane to Mirror. After Life feels like it's commenting on both memory and on cinema. The dead are forced to pick their favourite memory, each memory chosen will be have been shaped over the year's by that person's subconscious until it forms a perfect moment, viewed subjectively. They are then recreated on film, with limited tools, by a team of outsiders. So in a way that perfect subjective memory is becoming recorded as the objective truth. But the nature of the recreation means that it can never be an objective truth or a perfect recreation of the creator's original subjective memory. It can be read as an interesting assessment of the creative process that leads to a film being made, and how magic can still be found in cinema despite the compromises of the original vision. But to say After-life is just about that would be limiting the impact of this poignant little film, just as it would be limiting to say it's simply about a belief in some kind of continuation of the spirit. It's about humans, and it's about the little moments that make us human. It's a haunting film, moving without becoming heavy-handed, and capable of provoking a great deal of reflection and self-examination in the viewer.
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