Japan, 1998, 118mins, Japanese with English subtitles
Written, Directed and Edited by Kore-eda Hirokazu
Screened at the 46th Sydney Film Festival

Some films have one great idea, and you can often feel the idea announce itself in the first ten minutes. We travel with the film for awhile, gathering impressions of characters and second guessing the filmmakers. Where is this going? We look for the traditional A, the incident that makes this moment worthy of being an introduction to a film. Suddenly the idea is unleashed, the conceit the film will come to depend upon, and everything bends to accommodate this new presence. This "idea" isn't of the utmost importance to all films (many of the best films are shaped from the familiar), but when the mouse trap begins, the movie and the way you now view it change immediately. Oh...this type of film. Gimmick, sleight of hand, inspiration... It can be all three. After Life is an uneasy mixture of inspiration and gimmick.

The basic idea runs as such: Heaven is a quiet series of serene wooden offices where bodies in delay fill out forms and help the recently departed choose one memory that they may take with them to the "next level". All the employees at the office are rather young, and they reside here because they prefer not to choose the singular moment over the larger picture. Every week they have a quota they need to fill, around 20 to 30 people. They mull over the choice of event for a few days, discussing the life they have been wrested from with fondness and occasional regret. When they finally make a decision, a film crew is brought in, and the memory is reproduced for the camera's eye. Then the footage is screened.

The idea is quaint, humorous and quite delicate, and the conversations between the officials and the recently deceased are touching and wonderfully honest. What the film lacks is anything beyond this agreeable rambling. They talk and talk and talk, some discussion interesting, some slightly maudlin, and before long the film feels like it has nowhere to go, and is relying on solemnity and a fragile humanism to get it through. The idea has a comforting side, and we long for words and images to gently paw through hundreds of years of memories. It has a beauty reminiscent of Wings of Desire, the dream we wish could come true, yet it lacks Wenders' visual imagination and his ability to tie a fantastical idea to a realistic world. After Life feels like a vacation, and there is a distance that becomes alienating very quickly, as if one of Wenders' angels had taken over the film. There is no strangeness in these halls. Everything proceeds as expected, and the rare disturbance is overcome quickly enough.

Right: writer, director, editor Kore-eda Hirokazu
It all comes back to "the idea", and here it remains in those quotation marks. The film floats over us, never really challenging or threatening our wishes or expectations. The idea is never tested or integrated, never attached to a greater theme, character or vision. The angels never taste coffee or smoke a cigarette, and by the end the audience comes to experiences that absence.

adam rivett
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Also from Japan:
goto a review of Ikinai
goto a review of Spriggan
return to 1999 Sydney Film Festival index