Hirokazu Kore-eda’s meditative and powerful 1998 release After Life forces us to reflect on the role of cinema and memory as an embodiment of our lives. The film’s premise is already emotional enough: it centers around a kind of purgatory after death, before the afterlife, where the recently deceased are given a few days to choose one memory from their life to keep, forgetting everything else. The prompt itself is enough to stir an existential crisis, but the film remains, in Kore-eda fashion, a melancholy that is poignant, emotional, and perfectly sweet, without being sappy.
Kore-eda’s keen eye for the pure goodness in unethical or unlawful people examines an Earth-bound humanity in his more recent works, such as Shoplifters (2018) and Broker (2022). But in 1998, After Life centered around the fragments of who we are collected after our lives end. How do we hang on to one memory – regardless of whether one feels their life was fulfilling or not, one mere memory to encapsulate a lifetime’s version of oneself, to hang onto for eternity is a daunting, terrifying thought.
The film depicts vignettes of lives becoming encapsulated in a single memory, replicated in films by the employees of the center, the act of cinema serving as a time capsule for life on Earth. Cinema is depicted as a mirror for reality, film is the medium used to the selected moments one chooses to remember. After Life explores not just the intersection of memory and humanity, but the role of art in both creating and preserving it.
After Life primarily centers around afterlife purgatory employee Takashi Mochizuki (Arata Iura), who asks Ichiro Watanabe (Taketoshi Naito), a man who found his life on earth to be dull and rather unfulfilling, to choose the one memory from his life to keep. In true Kore-eda fashion, secrets emerge shining more light on the interconnected lives of the two, deeply examining the roles we play in each other’s lives without knowing it. His exploration of the initial premise primarily through the eyes of the relationship between Takashi and Ichiro studies the way our existences intersect through our pasts in a way that leaves room for selflessness and change through new truths, even after death.
After Life is so intricately written and directed, it requires a quiet attention and full gaze to dive into everything Kore-eda has given in just this one film. See it in a theater and let the social services wing of heaven wrap you in, and attempt to absorb everything Kore-eda has to offer in this philosophical, meditative masterpiece.
After Life
1998
dir. Hirokazu Kore-Eda
118 min.
Screens 5/30-5/31 @ Brattle Theatre – click here for showtimes and ticket info
Part of the continuing series: Reunion Week 2023
