After Life aka Wandafuru raifu
		Japanese language.  Japan, 1998.  Not rated.  118 minutes. Cast: Arata, Erika Oda, Susumu Terajima, Takashi Naitô, Kei Tani, Toru Yuri, Hisako Hara, Taketoshi Naitô Writer: Horokazu Kore-eda Music: Yashurio Kasamatsu Cinematographers: Masayoshi Sukita, Yutaka Yamazaki Producers: Masayuki Akieda, Shiho Sato Director: Horokazu Kore-eda

Grade: A

Review by Jeff Vorndam

 irokazu Kore-eda's After Life is one of the best films I've seen this year. Your enjoyment may depend somewhat on whether you find the premise as fascinating as I do. In the film, a group of 22 recently deceased people arrive at a way-station to eternity that resembles an old schoolhouse or goverment building. They are informed that over the course of the week they must select one special memory from their lives to spend their eternity in. For example, if someone chose a moment relaxing on a beach at age fifteen, they would be in that moment forever. It's an Eastern concept that I think a lot of Western viewers might consider condemnatory. We like to think variety is preferable to the same thing over and over again. However, Kore-eda convinced me by the end of the film of the perfection of the idea.

Many of the actors playing the recently demised are non-professionals. Kore-eda has a background in documentary film, and he started this film by  interviewing several people and posing them the question of which memory they would take with them. He came to realize that the authentic and idiosyncratic responses he was getting were more interesting than the scripted ones he had for his professional actors, so he incorporated them in the film. Much of the first half of the movie is in the style of a documentary/interview--shot in handheld 16mm, with little more than a talking head. The memories that are being described are so evocative that I didn't need to have cutaways to embellish them. The interviewers are presented initially as just doing their job. They talk amongst each other between interviews, and strategize on how to get their "clients" to select their best memories. Gradually, we learn more about these workers, who are deceased themselves, and why they are here.

Once a memory has been selected, the interview team reconstructs the memory on film and upon viewing the film the person whose memory is  being shown is transported into their afterlife within that reality. Problems arise when one seventy-year man can't find any memory worthwhile to mention. He's led an ordinary unremarkable life, he says. Another man, aged 21, pointedly won't select a memory because he feels that not doing so gives him responsibility for his own life. Eventually, the interview team has the 70 year old (Watanabe-san) view his life on tape--to jog his memory. A very funny scene occurs where he sees himself fumbling for words on a first date with his future wife, and he calls his younger self an "idiot." [Note: The following may be a minor spoiler:] When he does eventually select his memory, the freeze-frame instance was very moving to me and was when I came over Kore-eda's side that one memory could be beautiful enough to distill one's life and be worthy of living in forever. [End spoiler]

AboutFilm.Com The Big Picture
Carlo	B+
Alison	B+
Kris	-
Jen	-
Dana	A
Jeff	A

The film is essentially about memory and its importance in our lives. Kore-eda was inspired to make the film when his father contracted Alzheimer's disease and was no longer able to recognize his son. There is a wealth of ideas relating  to memory that are explored. For example, how much of what we recollect is even true or have we internally idealized it? Especially with the older memories of ours, are they authentic or do we mentally fill in gaps from what pictures, relatives, and home videos tell us? It's important that the movie makes a point that the interviewers recreate the memories on film. For most personal filmmakers, their movies are physical representations of their memories and experiences. In some ways, we go to movies to see films that remind us of our own past experiences.

I found After Life to be a very sweet and positive film. One woman's favorite memory of a red dress her brother gave her as a child, and the "Red Shoes" dance she performed in it was told in such childlike earnestness and enthusiasm that I couldn't help but smile for her when she had her experience recreated. The recreation scenes are filmed in 35mm so that they are more vivid than the rest of the film and it speaks to the pungence of the memories that we hold dearest. Like our most cherised memories, After Life is warm and intimate, and I will remember it fondly when the "year's best" lists are compiled.