Review: After Life

By kevin on August 08, 2006 at 7:48am EDT

In After Life director Hirokazu Kore-eda wanted to explore the importance of the individual memories we all collect throughout life and how profoundly our recollection of those memories can affect us. When he was a young child Kore-eda’s grandfather became senile and gradually forgot everything about himself and his family. Nobody knew what Alzheimer’s was at that time and his own memories of his grandfather in that state inspired him to make this film. While writing the script the makers of the film asked 500 people to describe which single memory they would take with them to heaven. Based on that information they were able to hash out a general idea for a script but a lot of the film is actually non-actors being interviewed about their real memories.

The setting of the film is a spacious but somewhat aged and utterly non-ethereal office building where people go for one week after they die. The purpose of the time spent there is to choose one memory from their entire lifetime that they want to keep with them before moving on. They are each assigned a case worker to help them pick something and then remember specific details about it. They must choose a memory between Monday and Wednesday because during the rest of the week the staff and crew work to film a reenactment of the memory chosen for one final viewing before it’s time to move on to the real afterlife. What that may be, however, is never really explained in detail; nor does it really need to be.

People deal with this scenario very differently. Some choose not to make a decision and are given an opportunity to work there in some capacity until they feel ready, no matter how long that takes. Others simply have a hard time thinking of anything, due to what they perceive as a fairly empty life. Through the process of trying to choose, they’re able to come to terms with their lives on some level and in doing so they’re finally able to move on.

One of the interesting aspects of this film is how completely earthly everything is, from the chipped paint on the walls to the modest bedrooms everyone stays in. At one point one of the characters needs help remembering aspects of his life so they give him VHS videotapes; one for each year, and a VCR to play them on. He sits there watching grainy footage of himself on awkward dates and having breakfast with his wife. This is also true of the reenactment sequences. They use very simple props for the reenactments like clumps of cotton for clouds and a spray bottle of water to re-create the feeling of sweat on a forehead. You may wonder why all this is necessary given the fact that according to the story they already had footage of people’s entire lives, but this is a film that just doesn’t need to be nitpicked in that way. It was necessary because some of the reenactments are real to the people involved and that comes across on screen through their reactions to even the tiniest of details. It gives the film an overall quaintness and keeps the focus on the memories themselves instead of superfluous details and over-analysis.

The first half of the movie is mostly footage of people recounting their memories while intermittently being asked to expand on certain details by someone off camera. Some of these are actors working from a script and some are real people remembering real memories but we’re never told which are which. These scenes were shot on 16mm film stock by Yutaka Yamazaki, an established documentary cinematographer. This gives a necessary sense of realism to the memories and helps the audience buy in to what’s going on in a way that might be difficult if everything was shot like a normal movie.

The second half of the film deals a little more with the real actors and is shot like a normal drama. Mochizuki (Arata Iura), a case worker who died at the age of 22 finds that one of the men he’s assigned to, Watanabe (Taketoshi Naito), was married to his own former fiancé, Kyoko (Kyoko Kagawa). When his 18 year old trainee Shiori (Erika) discovers this, her own feelings for Mochizuki begin to bubble over and she must find a way to deal with the fact that he now has a reason to re-examine his own memories.

It’s not very often a film comes along with the ability to deeply effect its viewer in any particular way, let alone nudge them into pondering the individual moments of their lives. In that way “After Life” is a unique cinematic gem with a lot to offer. And even if it didn’t have any life-affirming aspects at all it would still be a really beautifully-shot film with a quality ensemble cast ranging from established veterans like Kei Tani to future stars making their film debuts like Arata and Yusuke Iseya. Looking back on this film nearly a decade after it was first released it’s amazing how much sheer talent was involved that nobody knew about at the time. Somehow it’s aged into even more of a must-see than it was back then.