Amazon.com: This unpretentious, endearing film is a modest triumph. Based on interviews with more than 500 people about the one memory they would choose to take with them to heaven, Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-Eda has modeled a unique blend of documentary and fiction that addresses the vagaries of memory but also what it means to make films. After Life transpires in a sort of way station where the dead must select one memory to be re-created on film and taken on with them forever, relinquishing everything else. Over the span of a week, a dedicated group of caseworkers tease out self-deceptions as well as real epiphanies from 22 different lives. An old woman remembers reuniting with her husband on a crowded bridge after World War II; a man recollects the breeze felt on a tram ride the day before summer vacation; a successful man faces his own treachery. Remembering becomes a courageous act in the casual exposition of this lovely film. --Fionn Meade
Up all night This is an excellent film with a premise that will keep you up all night wondering what choice you would make in the same situation.
Definitely intriguing and very well crafted.
So simple and yet so strong... The idea behind the movie seems too simple - once you die you go to a way station between Earth and Heaven. You will stay there for a week. The first three days you get to pick one memory you wish to live in - forever. That memory becomes your after life. The people at the station film it and show it to you at the end of the week. The film's greatness is in the delivery. We follow not just the dead, who struggle with either a life rich in good memories or one bland and lacking in anything, but those who work in the way station. The station itself seems worn, but clean, with meeting rooms, a theater and even apartments. It reminds me slightly of the high schools you see in the Japanese movies. Maybe that's the point? Anyway, even the people who work there struggle with themselves as they help those newly departed find one moment, one memory they can live with. Or die with for an eternity. What single event is worth so much that you can't let it go? That it outweighs the rest of one's life? It is very profound, sad and joyful at the same time. A perfect movie in all respects. I plan to try to find more of the director's works.
One of the greatest films of recent decades There are many films referred to as 'lifelike,' as a positive attribute. This marvelous film - ironically about a post-mortem limbo world - is one of few that actually earns the term.
AFTER LIFE's contents are well-summarized by many other reviewers here, so I'd rather point out a few other notable aspects of the films, rather than rehash previous comments.
Kore'eda's roots were in documentary work, and a fascination with the kinds of stories that might unfold right before our eyes is one is strongly explored here, and in his other work. The same holds true for memory - specifically it's instability, it's idealistic qualities, and it's romantic nature. This focus was - according to Kore'eda - actually inspired by the Alzheimers-related decline of his grandfather (a major personal influence and role-model) - and this interest was also powerfully explored in his earlier MABOROSI (grief and growing beyond grief), and DISTANCE (a real masterpiece, charting the shifts between grief, blame, redemption and forgiveness between individuals who survivied a cult terror attack).
In AFTER LIFE, the same themes are allowed to slowly unfold, with a slow and recollective quality that - to me - has always been riveting. The film is very quiet in its' nature, so it may not be for everyone, but the drift towards naturalistic revelations is handled brilliantly here, leading to surprising moments of tenderness, and of dry and unexpected humor. This is a film in which nothing feels forced, but a gradually-coalescing story does emerge, and move along on its' own hypnotic power.
There is yet another theme present here as well - the transformative magic of film as a creative medium. The varied memories of the recently departed are commemorated in/as short films, improvisationally staged, which - under Kore'eda's guidance - is something of a love letter to film's potential as something democratic, and something that could record the spontaneous history and magic within 'ordinary' lives.
Successful at many levels, all of which weave together with skill and subtlety, AFTER LIFE is one of my favorites of recent years. I highly recommend.
-David Alston
After Life A uniquely poignant meditation on life and death, Koreeda's "After Life" began as a documentary project in which the director interviewed 500 people about their favorite memories. Intercutting these with characters of his own devising adds a touch of wry humor to his compassionate story of everyday people struggling to isolate a golden moment from their worldly existence. The choices are surprising as well as profound: watching staffers fabricate one man's experience flying a plane with cotton-ball clouds and giant wind fans is as much a testament to the art of cinema as it is a comment on personal whimsy and sensory pleasure. With a deceptively simple premise, Koreeda fashions a deeply affecting homage to the sweet here-and-now.
After Life Review I didn't even finish watching this movie. So the rating of one is based on the 40 minutes I saw. Maybe if I had finished watching the movie I would have rated it more but I never felt the urge to continue. This movie was recommend to me by someone who said it was very good.
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