Afterlife

[Aspirin]

Hi,

Afterlife came down to Singapore for the local film fest and it was
a sold out show ( or rather what I gathered from where I was
seated )
I would just like to know if there's anyway that I could get hold of the
film?
The local Japanese video stores have got a number of good films,
but I just couldn't find it... ( Prefably subtitled )

Also, I would just like to enquire if there's any trading of films done
between the members here?

thanks!

zhang!


===


 There are worse things in the world than being alone, 
 but few are worse than knowing you are alone when the 
 person you love is not.
 
 Quoted by somebody-but-I-forgot-who




---Ono Seiko and Aaron Gerow  wrote:
>
> >I saw Kore-Eda's Afterlife this past weekend and I was quite taken
with it.
> >What kind of response did it get in Japan? Aside from Maboroshi,
has he done
> >anything else? Is his at all associated with Naomi Kawase?
> 
> Here's the draft of my Yomiuri review of the film.  As for Kawase,
now 
> Sento, they have not worked together on a film as far as I know
(though I 
> once heard a rumor they were involved).
> 
> ********
> 
> 
> 
> 	How far back can you remember?  For me, it's hard to tell. 
Memories of 
> my early childhood are so much a mix of recollections, family
photos, and 
> parental stories that I can't tell which are the real memories and
which 
> are mere recreations.  This question is probably even more difficult
to 
> answer for today's children, video-taped from day one until their
whole 
> existence becomes summarized on magnetic tape.  When they look back
on 
> their lives, can they cull out any memories not mediated by the media 
> around them?
> 	There is one character in After Life who actually does look back on
his 
> life on video.  One of a score of people who died and find
themselves in 
> a dreary run-down institution , Watanabe (Taketoshi Naito), an old 
> gentleman, is asked by the employees working there to, within a
week's 
> time, pick one special memory from his life.  Once he has, the memory 
> will be recreated on film allowing him, after he views it, to go on
to 
> heaven with just that one thought in mind.
> 	Watanabe, however, cannot think of any good recollections; his
life, it 
> seems, has been that dull.  The tapes of his life that he borrows
(shot 
> by God, perhaps?) are then meant to jog his memory.
> 	Watanabe's story is only one of many in Hirokazu Koreeda's rich
ensemble 
> film, but it proves central not only narratively, interweaving as it
does 
> with the stories of his case worker, Mochizuki (ARATA), and Shiori
(Erika 
> Oda), the female employee who loves him, but also thematically.  What 
> meaning does our life have if we cannot recall a single important
memory?
> 	The place of memory in human existence is in fact one of the central 
> themes of Koreeda, a director who began in the world of television 
> documentary.  Not only was his first feature, the award winning
Maborosi, 
> about a woman trying to come to grips with memory of the sudden
suicide 
> of her husband, much of his TV work revolves around the issue. 
Kioku ga 
> Ushinawareta Toki (1996) documents a man who, due to a hospital
mishap, 
> cannot build up any new memories, and Kare no Inai Hachigatsu (1994) 
> records the last year and a half of the life of an AIDS victim as a 
> series of memories of him, trying to put on video what was important 
> about him.
> 	The problem with memory, however, is that it is not always
reliable.  
> Several of the dead in After Life, for instance, cannot recall
accurately 
> what happened and some lie outright.  Fiction, it seems, seeps into
the 
> records of our existence.
> 	Koreeda explores this problem through a mixture of fiction and 
> documentary in After Life itself.  Much of the movie is shot in 
> semi-documentary style, with both head-on "talking head" interviews
and 
> short hand-held shots using a long lens, and the content itself is 
> partially based on reality.  Many of the recounted memories were
culled 
> from interviews with older Japanese, some of whom actually appear in
the 
> movie telling their own tales.  Even the actors were given the
freedom to 
> speak of their past before the camera.
> 	Which stories are real and which ones are fiction is impossible to
tell, 
> which is probably something to be expected of a world where, once one 
> decides on a memory, it is not archived, as with Watanabe's
videotapes of 
> the actual incidents, but recreated using all the tricks of the movie 
> business, from cotton clouds to paper cherry blossoms.
> 	That Koreeda's characters see these reproductions and find them real 
> speaks volumes about our memories, but one wonders what the
documentarist 
> Koreeda then thinks about the relation between fiction and
documentary.  
> At times, After Life seems dangerously close to the pabdum
celebration of 
> cinema as a repository of our memories found in Cinema Paradiso and
Niji 
> o Tsukamu Otoko.  Koreeda, an extremely skilled but not always
original 
> filmmaker, gives us an enjoyable, emotional, but still a bit too 
> easy-to-digest meditation on memory.
> 	After Life is most interesting when seen in the context of Koreeda's 
> work.  In Kioku ga Ushinawareta Toki, the victim actually tries to
use 
> video as a means of supplementing his impaired memory, but it doesn't 
> work.  Something else, it seems, is needed for such media to become 
> "real."
> 	Some of the dead in After Life do not choose a memory within a
week's 
> time, either because they cannot or because they refuse to.  Those
who do 
> not choose stay on as employees to help the subsequent dead choose
their 
> memories. 
> 	In some ways, it reflects a failure in their life, but in  other
ways it 
> doesn't.  Like Mochizuki, one gains the opportunity to involve
oneself in 
> the memories of many.  Koreeda's Kare no Inai Hachigatsu is in some
ways 
> about that, about the director realizing he is no longer an
observer, but 
> an intimate participant in his subject's life.
> 	After Life is then not merely a celebration of memory turned
cinematic, 
> it is a statement that our memories--and lives--are real only to the 
> extent that they truly involve others, whether through the medium of 
> 

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