AFTER LIFE
For six years I have heard nothing but raves about Hirokazu Koreeda's AFTER LIFE, his drama about people who stop by a limbo-like waystation on their way from being newly dead to whatever lies beyond. It had the kind of word of mouth that made me go out of my way to see Wong Kar-wai's IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE in Montpelier VT. (That film, my favorite of the decade, is playing at the Harvard Film Archive the next three Tuesday's at 7 pm) I'm glad I only traveled that far for AFTER LIFE.
Not that it is not a remarkable film. The concept is intriguing: those who die must select one memory to take with them. During the week at the waystation, they are to choose a memory, which will be filmed and recorded. That will be the only memory of life they will have. There are all kinds of possibiities:
an 8-l/2 way of the difficulty of capturing reality through film, the reality of flawed or distorted memory, and, perhaps most important, the choosing of one memory to keep at the expense of remembering all the experience that may have made up the fabric of our existences. These themes are barely touched upon let alone explored.
And most of the characters are not that interesting, and many of their memories are banal.. And maybe that is part of the point, for those that administer and film them, are also newly (and not so newly) deads, who have created a sort of run down bereaucratic processing place in whast looks like an abandoned high school. In fact,at its best, it occasionally reminded me of the world of the protagonist of Akira Kurosawa's masterwork, IKIRU And, the style of the film may be fitting, for it is mainly a series of talking heads interviews. Maybe because everyone in the film is already dead, there is very little joy. Conceptually that may be great, but it's hard to sit through two hours of a movie on concept that,, no matter how wonderfully minimalist it may be, remains nly a concept Only in the case of a round faced old woman who sees the day cherry blossems fall from the sky does the film glimpse the joy of memory.
Not that it is not a remarkable film. The concept is intriguing: those who die must select one memory to take with them. During the week at the waystation, they are to choose a memory, which will be filmed and recorded. That will be the only memory of life they will have. There are all kinds of possibiities:
an 8-l/2 way of the difficulty of capturing reality through film, the reality of flawed or distorted memory, and, perhaps most important, the choosing of one memory to keep at the expense of remembering all the experience that may have made up the fabric of our existences. These themes are barely touched upon let alone explored.
And most of the characters are not that interesting, and many of their memories are banal.. And maybe that is part of the point, for those that administer and film them, are also newly (and not so newly) deads, who have created a sort of run down bereaucratic processing place in whast looks like an abandoned high school. In fact,at its best, it occasionally reminded me of the world of the protagonist of Akira Kurosawa's masterwork, IKIRU And, the style of the film may be fitting, for it is mainly a series of talking heads interviews. Maybe because everyone in the film is already dead, there is very little joy. Conceptually that may be great, but it's hard to sit through two hours of a movie on concept that,, no matter how wonderfully minimalist it may be, remains nly a concept Only in the case of a round faced old woman who sees the day cherry blossems fall from the sky does the film glimpse the joy of memory.
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