After Life

After Life (1998) is Hirokazu Kore-eda's follow up to his stunning Ozu-esquese debut, Marbosi. Again, Kore-eda is grapples with the concepts of memory and loss. I feel that this exercise is less affecting than his previous foray into those themes. There are some heartfelt moments, but the premise of a bureaucratic purgatory where a group of dead create eternal memories in a make-shift studio in order to send the recently departed into the afterlife, is a bit too contrived for me. The execution of the enterprise comes across as extremely Japanese in every sense: deadlines, a daily schedule, dormitory rules, paternalistic announcements and supervisors, etc...could it not be hell for some? Apparently there are some scenes that are unscripted and feature everyday people re-telling powerful memories from their life. One of the most profound is that of an old woman joyfully recounting a story from her youth, in which she went to dances and was rewarded by her brother with treats for recounting her time at the dances. Overall I think Kore-eda has interesting themes, but the execution of the premise was too hard for me to swallow. Visually it was lacking the powerful expanse of nature and the Sea of Japan from the remote Ishikawa that inhabited his overshadowing previous film.