Saturday, June 20, 2009

Departures (2008)




As Asian moviegoers heartily laughed at moments and situations which seemed unhumorous to this frequent denizen of the cinema, the thought crystallized with utmost exactitude, swiftly appearing like a person who had been interminably sitting alongside you for so long that they had gradually dissolved for an inestimable period of time. With exponential fierceness, the voluminous gamut the mind so meticulously runs through was conquered. Departures, directed by Yojiro Takita from a screenplay by Kundo Kayama, is a firmly Nipponese dramatic journal detailing the wistful hope of compromise between a culture's deeply ingrained stigmas of death and its own duteous veneration of those who pass on with euphonious humanism. The picture is at times tonally wandering and disordered, its episodic construct sometimes giving way to ostensible incoherence and overwhelmingly instinctive and facile manipulation. Yet as time passes its greater, more perdurable qualities tend to partly supersede and diminish its blemishes and deviances.

Departures is, intriguingly, however, itself a departure from popular Japanese cinematic perceptions. This disconsonantly diametric stance—antipodal and complementary all at once, steeped in Japanese traditions and simultaneously tottering about in search of a highly significant rapprochement with occidentally treasured modernism—nearly necessitates such drastic modifications and alterations to Departures' inflection. Determining how much of this vacillation is more mundanely tied to the demands of Takita's filmmaking—Departures' morbid subject matter and attendant heartache arguably call for audience-softening badinage, jocoseness and even some limited forays into near-slapstick—remains literally recondite. The story is of Daigo Kobayashi, fledgling cellist, turned encoffinner apprentice. (It should be noted that the film's most robust humor is intrinsically tied to the Japanese fear of uncleanliness, chiefly derived in this picture from the corpses with which the protagonist must routinely deal.) Insofar as Departures evidences social impediments, it does not follow through with the strenuous strictures which laced Akira Kurosawa's own socially conscious explorations of bodily and spiritual decrepitude leading to gradational putrefaction of the noumenal (pace Kant) and rectification of the discarnate. In that it too deals with the moribund certainty that follows infirmity and senectitude, Departures most immediately calls to mind Ikiru, though the catholic mien of the picture shrouds the subtextually grimy and complex sociological realism of Kurosawa's oeuvre—but perhaps more apropos would be Drunken Angel with a paternal older man overlooking the addling progression of a young, unsure man.

It is in this regard where Departures makes its most pointed claim as being a film worth seeking out on Father's Day weekend. The film's hero, Daigo (a fairly sensitive, but occasionally quite overbearing Masahiro Motoki), suffers from continual Oedipal longing and disquietude due to his father abandoning him when he was at a tender age. Daigo's employer, a stereotypically crusty, amusingly soft-spoken old man named Ikuei Sasaki (a warmly tender Tsutomo Yamazaki) oversees Diago's budding maturation as a man. In one memorable scene, Diago, after having been humiliated by those for whom he cares once they have learned what he does, and now wishing to quit his job, goes upstairs from the front office of the encoffining establishment, to where Ikuei lives, only to be unwittingly persuaded to not leave by the old man's tale of how he became an encoffiner and embalmer—his dearly departed wife was the first person for whom he plied his newfound trade.

Daigo's peregrination from cellist to encoffiner finds greater artistic resonance through director Takita's compassionate staging of Daigo's physical manipulation of the corpses which are so stigmatized by the salubriously hygienic parameters of Shinto as unclean. As Daigo and Ikuei enact one ritualized passing after another for the deceased, however, it becomes apparent that they are in their own, loving way, appeasing and honoring Kami. Takita's compositional focus, aided greatly by cinematographer Takeshi Hamada, finds Daigo and Ikuei's respective journeys—one ebbing, the other still rising—as parables, not so much demystifying the “casketeering” process, but impeccably detailing it. Avoiding prosaic linkings between the phenomena and the process, Takita and Hamada conspire to create a honeyed placidness out of colors like Japanese water painting. The oriental-occidental cross-cultural conversation has been ongoing for a long time now: each side has commented on each other's redoubtable attributes, whether they be artistic, political or otherwise. Monet's inspiration from Japanese water prints leading to his creation of the water garden, with weeping willows, water lilies, wisteria and bamboo, which further inspired him to create some of his most gorgeous paintings such as the Japanese Bridge and Water Lilies. Viewing Departures, it may be said that Takita has been inspired by Monet, particularly in the transcendental light that accompanies so many of the rooms in which Daigo works. The pictorial communication between European and Asian artists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries continues, and cinema has helped to make it only more comprehensive.

The beams of sunlight that slice through rooms and people, the hot, smoking grills and pans on which food is promptly cooked, the golden kerosene lamps, all equally dulcify and anticipate the fiery cremation which awaits those in whom Daigo invests so much time, patience and care. Daigo's musically trained, and expertly dexterous fingers and hands, caress the dead with singular circumspection. The act of beautification is not solely intended to satiate the Kami or the departed, but those who in life held the deceased dear to their heart. Ministerial considerations can only go so far; with a deeply empathizing credulity, one man informs Daigo and his employer that his wife never looked so beautiful in life as she did after they had finished transforming her from a sallow corpse to a ravishing alter-avatar of herself, readying her for the transmigration about which characters repeatedly speak.

Unfortunately, Departures is not satisfied to be a touching tale of acceptance of an ostracized vocation, and excavation of Japan's complicated, tiered social stratas, but by the endmost chapter, Daigo's throes of Oedipal dejection and bitterness are purified in an unnecessary and maudlinly lachrymose denouement. Takita's direction finally slackens in discipline; the score by Joe Hisaishi, often swelling at dramatic points, becomes too distracting for the sake of the imagery it is intended to support. At this point, Departures has departed the track on which it had succeeded, depicting Daigo's debilitating troubles stemming from his father's abandonment as the firing table from which the remainder of the tale emanated. The risk of unwarranted manipulation seems to not deter Takita, however, as he at the very least finds the encircling ardency of feeling to convey something meaningful, if not especially fruitful. Departures is fittingly organic in that way, as it chronicles the nearly agestral-like naturalness of the decomposition of the human body, touched up afterwards. Departures becomes overripe in its concluding passage, but that does not take everything away from its lovelier properties.

51 comments:

Joseph "Jon" Lanthier said...

I resolutely agree, and much of this seems to dove-tail splendidly with my far less articulate write-up for Slant Magazine. I thought it an oddly "un-Japanese" like film for the country to have nominated to the Oscars, but I think that was part of the point; and certainly Japan has just as much right to be saccharine and histrionic as we do. That having been said, like you I found the subtle symbolism of the encoffinment process itself most rewarding both aesthetically and subtextually -- I like the connection with Monet, too, though I doubt he would have painted a cellist playing passionately against a laughably bucolic backdrop. And the ending, indeed, was far too weepy and clichéd, but in retrospect it's the film's quiet wonders that stay with you, rather than the missteps. Not a bad Father's Day pick at all, and I wish both you and your paterfamilias the best.

Coleman's Corner in Cinema... said...

Thank you, Jon. I'll be sure to take a look at what you wrote on this film in Slant Magazine as soon as I'm able. I agree with you that this is "an oddly 'un-Japanese' like film for the country to have nominated to the Oscars, but I think that was part of the point"--very true! And I concur with this, "...certainly Japan has just as much right to be saccharine and histrionic as we do." Indeed. Very similar thoughts were going through my mind as the picture was winding down.

I also agree, quite humorously, with your comment about Monet probably not painting a lone cellist playing against a "laughably bucolic backdrop." Ha!

Once again, thank you most sincerely, Jon. And I'll be sure to take a look at your piece on this film, as I find that many don't seem to like it much.

Have a great Father's Day weekend yourself, and I reciprocate kindly by wishing both you and your paterfamilias the best.

Sam Juliano said...

Well Alexander, either IKIRU or THE DRUNKEN ANGEL can be recalled here, as well as a recent Japanese film by Kore-eda titled AFTERLIFE, which also accentuates the contemporary Japanese infatuation with death, also evidenced in part in a number of other features. Wow, you never cease to amaze me. I watched this film hypnotically, and while my opinion is much closer to Jon Lanthier's than it is to yours, I commend you for not denying this this often beautiful film your patented exhaustive analytical and thematic treatment. The Oedipal side to the main character of course is obvious from the get-go, and it's further emphasized rather heavy-handedly in that over-the-top denouement replete with that annoying Smiling Mike wife (rather a cardboard character) overlooking the proceedings. I was fascinated with your elaboration in Paragraph 2 of the Japanese's film's "departure" from perceptions and those fabulous delineations, likewise I must say I am really imprssed with what you say here in this paragraph (and how you say it):

"Daigo's peregrination from cellist to encoffiner finds greater artistic resonance through director Takita's compassionate staging of Daigo's physical manipulation of the corpses which are so stigmatized by the salubriously hygienic parameters of Shinto as unclean. As Daigo and Ikuei enact one ritualized passing after another for the deceased, however, it becomes apparent that they are in their own, loving way, appeasing and honoring Kami. Takita's compositional focus, aided greatly by cinematographer Takeshi Hamada, finds Daigo and Ikuei's respective journeys—one ebbing, the other still rising—as parables, not so much demystifying the “casketeering” process, but impeccably detailing it!"

Fantastic!

I must say Alexander, I could have used less shots of our protagonist playing his cello in the wind-swept fields (that was saccharine genre manipulation) but the film had a strange, albit cultural resonance which not only commented on the troublesome Japanese economy, but also on the mysticism that informs stubborn adherence to old religious customs. I thought another "bridge" to the current period was the death in the open scene of a transsexual, and of the love-hate relationship he had with his/her siblings. It was a disquieting moment that dictated the strange flow and context of this film, which despite some very apparent flaws, connects emotionally, and reveals some intriguing cultural mores. I keep going back and forth between 3 1/2 and 4 (of 5) for this one.

Ah, what a tremendous review, and I mean it sincerely. I am NOT patronizing you.

Coleman's Corner in Cinema... said...

Sam, I truly and deeply appreciate your thoroughly stirring comment, and I thank you for the profusely kind words.

Jon, you and I all agree about some of the film's shortcomings, even if you are kinder to the film than I. I agree that the wife was something of a cardboard caricature creation--and yet I couldn't dislike her as other critics have. The actress was largely able to make the character seem believable, and in that way I think her performance is being underrated. The lead actor occasionally annoyed me--but some of the fault was with the direction, which was harmed by an overreliance on stifling close-ups. (The silly Sound of Music-like shots of Daigo playing his cello were too rich for the rest of the film's palette.)

However, the film has many fine attributes, and though I wasn't sure how I felt about the picture once I left the theatre, over time its finer moments seemed to drown out most of the problems I had with the film.

In any event, I'm always happy to see someone like a film more than I did, because it means they were perhaps more receptive to its inner meaning, whereas I allowed myself to be bothered by certain blemishes. Nonetheless, I find myself liking the film the more I get away from it.

And Jon, I read your Slant Magazine piece a little earlier today and loved it! Our pieces do dove-tail with one another quite "splendidly," as you write.

Thank you both for your fantastic comments on this Japanese picture.

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Hals said...

I found this film exceedingly cliched and a big-time bore. I love sci-fi (its one of my favorite genres as it is yours, and over the years I've celebrated THE FOUNTAIN, A.I., and GATTACA among others, not to mention the three you cite, 2001, THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH and SOLARIS) but this fiasco never came together. It was cryptic and muddled, and only Clint Mansell's exquisite score survived the debacle.
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January 5, 2012 at 8:42 AM