After Life

Following Departures from earth, director Kore-Eda Hirokazu asks what memory people would choose to carry into the great void. Hirokazu interviewed 500 individuals adolescent through senility and arranged to recreate their memory on film. These documentary pieces are interwoven with actors who create a mythical purgatory in which each decedent is given 3 days to choose among life's recollections a single scene to film, after which they disappear with their memory into the next realm. Actors portray guardian angels who help people recall the meaningful moments of their lives by deception, asking questions, manipulation, providing photos, maps, videos one for each year of life "these videos may not match what you recall." Recall imperfectly reflects confusion, myth, affection, and the disconnect between how we want to be seen and what really happened. Actors are interwoven with the documentary interviews.Mochizuki is a 22yo angel assigned to interview two older bland men, Yamamoto 50 who wants to obliterate his past and Watanabe 71 yo who can't recall a life memory worth preserving. The most difficult cases are the ordinary. Shiori 18yo an intern for the past year is assigned to assist Mochizuki. Her brash emotional outbursts are blamed on "that's what happens when you are raised without a dad." Shiori's adolescent impatience with the bamboo quiet bursts forth with indiscreet revelations protected by colleague Kawashima "who is Kyoko?. Their boss Kennosuke Nakamura reprimands Shiori "the moon is beautiful, the shape never changes, it only looks different depending on the light" hoping she understands. Boss Nakamura's competitive ego (prideful need to win) incarcerates him in purgatory.Tatara Kimiko born 1920 plays herself. The documentary filming of her defining memory of red is beyond the price of rubies.Kiyo Nishimura's dementia weaves a fascination with natural beauty as an eternal 9yo. Gisuke Shoda recounts his sexual exploits. Yusuke Iseya 21 years refuses to choose a memory. He believes not selecting a single memory consigns him to being responsible for each moment of his entire life. Kana Yoshino 16yo chooses eating pancakes in Disneyland while Shiori gently prods and pushes her to search for more meaningful memories. Nobuko Amano a professional woman discusses her affair with a married man. Is this memory or a self deceiving memory of being loved?How far back can you remember? Bundo recalls being 5 months old lying nude in the sunlight. Hot tub immersion is offered for quelling anxiety, recreating the womb.The dilemmas of the 22 individuals in this week's purgatory cohort slowly play out over 3 days allotted to retrieve and select the single memory which becomes the only accompaniment into the great beyond. After Life is a coming of age documentary-movie amalgam, intertwined with music which is believed to improve memory retention. Some with dementia are still able to sing, play musical instruments, retrieve music-associated memory The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat: And Other Clinical Tales, The Music Never Stopped Grateful Dead true story, Awakenings.The entire lifespan from labor, crib, dating, marriage, midlife dreams, to maturation, aging senility is portrayed with powdered snow gentleness. And the surprise is who is assigned the role of interviewing guiding angel, and what happens to the guardians.Ikiru (The Criterion Collection) shares the same quiet unfolding storyline as After Life. The impatience of youth is contrasted with a 50 year journey interacting with other people's memories, finding bits and pieces of oneself in the process, and finally knitting the whole together into wisdom. "Perhaps remembering is a way of taking responsibility."Like documentary Happy After Life finds meaning in the every day aromas, feel of breeze, colors, the ordinary Our Town: A Play in Three Acts (Perennial Classics).SPOILER ALERT On re-view the first and last scenes are identical. Kawashima is assigned to interview men who regale him with their sexual exploits. Why? Iseya is assigned as Kawashima's intern. Why? The moon seen through the skylight is a movie set. On the roof, the prop master shines the shadows which play on the painted moon.Mochizuki "I searched for a memory of happiness and learn 50 years later I was part of someone else's happiness. What a wonderful discovery."My interpretation is the entire film is a movie set to move the stuck guardians in general, and Mochizuki in particular, toward eternity. Mochizuki was assigned Shiori as intern as a sign that he is to guide another forward before he leaves. Shiori clings to sentimentality, a crush on Mochizuki as an excuse to not choose a memory and forget him. Iseya is assigned as intern to Kawashima as a sign that Kawashima will be next targeted to move on. Kawashima shares with Shiori advice for handling men who pridefully regale with their sexual conquests during their 3 day interviews, preparing her for an assault on her fixation with insincere romantic theatricality and drama. The persons interviewed are quickly shuffled through as part of the work of the guardian angels. But the process is actually directed at moving the guardians on. Mochizuki has been in multiple facilities over his 50 years as a guardian angel. The time has come for him to discover himself.After Life has the texture of a coming of age saga, paced for immersion and contemplation. 18yo Shiori's short attention span is engaged by traffic, crowds, a mechanical clock, similar to the Rube Goldberg device in the Boston Logan airport, unwilling to engage the patience required to absorb understanding. The hopeful message is if you don't grow up on earth, you are forced to grow up After Life where pride matures into humility, dependence into responsibility, impatience into languor, reactivity into self management.5 stars hopeful movie of growing up allowing awareness to unfold with stately grace.Also see Dhamma Brothers, Healing & the Mind (Programs 1-5) and Hirokazu's heart gentling Like Father Like Son story of 6 year olds switched at birth, and the decision about transferring them back to their biological families.