Departures and The Ritual of Death.

When movies make us question our own mortality, usually we leave with an uneasy feeling and are quick to forget about it. Not so with “Okiribito” (Departures), a wonderful film from Japan that confronts the questions of mortality, happiness, life, death in the rawest, barest ways, after all this is a movie about people who ritualistically send the dead off to the great divine.
The story begins as most movies where the protagonist undergoes a major transformation, in the middle of that transformation. The audience learns that the protagonist has moved back to his hometown from Tokyo and that the last few months have been awkward. This is a great way to grab the audience’s attention, forcing them to start to ask questions. But another great strength about the opening scene is cinema photography, the winter snow a perfect white, the road still visible, going somewhere, but we do not know where, after all the character is in the middle of his journey, spiritually, mentally, physically and we must go back to the beginning.
We quickly learn that the protagonist, Daigo Kobayashi (Masahiro Motoki) was a cello player for an orchestra that was recently dissolved. Figuring that he isn’t talented enough to get into another orchestra he suggest to his wife Mika, (Kazuko Yoshiyuki) that they move to his hometown. Unemployed, he looks for work, and finds an ad for departures, by a company called the NK Incorporated, figuring it might be a travel company he applies.
Soon we learn that the job deals with dead bodies, which he would be, expected to touch, clean, and beatify with makeup. But he soon learns, the beauty of the rituals that his employer Ikuei Sasaki (Tsutomu Yamazaki), perform to help send the dead off, beautiful and fresh. Eventually he is able to perform the rituals by himself.
The death becomes a metaphor for transformation. Not only are the bodies dead and cold, and then made warm and beautiful from the undertakers care, in front of the families, Diago and Mika undergo a transformation in life. Their marriage, strained from the move, and eventually from Diago’s work, isn’t a strain comfort; Diago makes more money than he did before, but a strain from the loss of prestige, and of the bigness of the city. We all want our lives to have space, and scope, we want to do great things, things that people will see, and say, ‘Hey that person is doing something great!” We want our lives to be full of adventure, and to ultimately mean something. But we often forget that our life intrinsically means something by the very act of living. That by our communication, our touching, our sharing with others that we give meaning to each other and validate life. Diago learns that while his job has no prestige, and that he lives in a small town with a fraction of the number of people as did Tokoyo, his life had more meaning because he was able to touch, and heal more people than he could ever have in Tokyo, that his job wasn’t a celebration of death, but a confirmation of life, that someone lived, that his audience, were people that were touched by this now passed on person.
“Okiribito” then becomes a movie that isn’t trying to make the viewer feel sad, or uncomfortable, but to help them confirm that their existence matters, just by doing what they do, breath, eat, love, work, play. Only then is the true beauty of the undertakers ritual of death fully bloomed.