‘AFTER Life” is a strange but thought-provoking Japanese film that tackles big issues of love, memory and death with remarkable (non-denominational) lightness and a gently comic sense of humor – without recourse to fancy special effects.
At first, it seems stagy and slow and even to verge on the pretentious, but the film steadilyaccumulates dramatic power as its carefully sketched characters reveal their internal lives. By its end, “After Life” has developed into one of those haunting movies whose scenes can pop back into your consciousness hours or days after you have seen it.
In what looks like a dingy, abandoned school, a group of mostly young men and women are “processing” a newly arrived batch of mostly elderly people.
This odd setting turns out to be a bureaucratic way station between heaven and earth. It is here that the recently deceased decide on the one memory they may take with them to eternity, with the help of the polite, respectful people who live and work at the center.
You have a week to choose, and if you like you can watch videos of your life to jog your memory of the good or significant times. At the end of that week, the folks working at the school will go into a studio and film that one memory for you. Your final moments in a human body are spent in a screening room, watching that scene.
The movie follows one particular batch of the dead, including a teen-aged girl, a prostitute in her 40s, a middle-aged man who lived for flying, and an old man (Taketoshi Naito) who cannot think of a single worthwhile moment in a long but mediocre life.
But it is really about the souls doing the interviewing – especially Mochizuki (Arata), and Shiori (Erika Oda), the young assistant who loves him – and the way they are affected by talking with their clients about love and memory.
Only at the end does the film reveal what happens if you refuse to choose a memory to take with you, and just who the interviewers are.
Former documentary filmmaker Hirokazu Kore-Eda (whose feature “Maborosi” screened here a few years back) cleverly contrasts the security-camera style videotapes of the clients’ lives with the filmed memories they get to take with him.
And his own spare, elegant camera work (especially the shots of snow falling on park benches) gives the whole production a very Japanese, bittersweet tone that goes well with the subject matter.
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AFTER LIFE
Starring Taketoshi Naito, Erika Oda and Arata. Written and directed by Hirokazu Kore-Eda. Running time: 118 minutes. Unrated. At Film Forum, Houston Street, between Sixth Avenue and Varick Street.