Afterlife

[Eija Margit Niskanen]

I think After Life (aka Wonderful Life) is such a new film, that it is not
on video yet. It is stil playing in a theater in Tokyo, so it probably
takes a few months before they put it out on video. 
Eija

At 08:38 PM 6/2/99 -0700, you wrote:
>
>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 
>> 
>
>_________________________________________________________
>DO YOU YAHOO!?
>Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com
>
>
>