Helen's Blog /

Academy-Award Winner For Best Foreign Film 2009

It was full house yesterday at the 1200-seater Teatro Giovanni Theatre in Udine for the European premiere of Departures.

After an introduction on duplex from Japan by Yojiro Takita, the Director, who called attention to the producer Yasuhiro Mase, seated in the theatre, who would report to him following the screening, the audience was drawn into the strange fate of of a cellist, Daigo Kobayashi, who finds himself out of a job, when his Symphony Orchestra is dissolved, forcing him to move with his young wife from Tokyo, to the countryside house he has inherited from his deceased mother and seek new employment. Following up an ad he thinks involves a job in tourism, he is immediately hired by Sasaki, the owner of a funeral parlour which encoffinates' corpses for their journey to the other World.

At first, the work inspires revulsion and fear but gradually, Daigo pursues the funeral ceremonies with skill and empathy despite rejection from friends and his wife who consider the job as out of bounds. When Mika, his wife gives him the pink slip and goes back to Tokyo, Daigo assumes his new life, and deftly continues his work, believing its values and he begins making decisions for himself about what his own life should be. Intertwined is a theme of his being abandoned as a child by his father, whom he has not seen for thirty years and with whom he is finally reunited after the former dies when he finally accepts to lovingly encoffinate him too, despite feelings of strong bitterness triggered by his rejection as a young boy.

"Love", the producer Mase asserts, "is the pervasive theme of the film". Family love, love between a married couple, parental love and on a larger scale, for friends and co-workers.

This is why he thinks Departures was chosen above all other contenders as Best Foreign Film for the Academy Awards in 2009. No other Japanese film has ever won such a prestigious citation in the history of film, even though "Rasson" did win an honourable mention at Cannes many years ago." The film to date, has garnered 78 Awards, including 10 Grand Awards in its native country, unprecedented to date and is a huge box-office success.

Even though there is no specific message meant to be vehiculed by the screenplay, the work does touch upon vital and universal issues and problems like unemployment, relocation to native roots, fatherly love, conservative viewpoints of norms and conjugal relationship which should furthermore explain beyond the Oscar, its secured distribution in all of Europe, with the exception ironically, of England and Italy.

Drawing a fine line between laughter and tears, Departures will deeply move all who see it, despite cultural differences.