Okuribito or Departures, released in 2008 is a Japanese drama film directed by Yōjirō Takita and written by Kundō Koyama. The casts of the film are Masahiro Motoki, Ryoki Hirosue, Tsutomu Yamazaki, Kimiko Yo and many more. The film won Academy Award for Best International Feature Film (2009), Japan Academy Prize for Picture of the Year (2009), Asian Film Award for Best Actor (2009) etc.
Summary of the plot
A failed career, uncertainty, unable to find his own dream and one mysterious job advertisement led a middle aged man to the possibility of becoming a nōkanshi. The plot only gets more twisted from here.
Review
The film portrays The encoffining ritual (called nōkan), a Japanese funeral ritual and the social distance and discriminations toward the nōkanshi (納棺師), people who performed this ritual. In traditional Japanese culture, people who deal with dead bodies are considered “impure” or “unclean” and they have to perform a purifying ritual to wash off the kagare. This point of view created a prejudice against the nōkanshi as their work revolves around the dead.
The ritual performed in the film was astonishing and I never thought, people processing and cleaning a dead bodies for the burial could become a work of art. From the cleaning to putting the make-ups on, the ritual portrayed in the film shows a peaceful, delicate and symmetric harmony. The film is also a good example of showing how death is mostly for the living. Death consumes the dead, the dead disappear from the present, but the living have to live their lives, go through the pain, grief and endure the lose for a very long time.
I didn’t understand the concept of categorizing the protagonist job as taboo in the film as I’ve never seen or heard of it before, also it didn’t make any sense of showing discriminating attitude towards this particular profession while people should be grateful, but during the watching period I was unaware of the traditional concept.
Favorite quote
"In ancient times, before humans invented writings, they searched for the stone that resembled their feelings, and gave it to another person. The person who received the stone, read the other person's feelings by the weight and texture."
Conclusion
People process grief differently, death is inevitable but I never knew the ritual before sending off the dead to their journey can hold delicacy and aesthetic. The production team had to overcome some obstacles to release the film, but in the end all their hard work finally paid off.
References
Cover poster - Source