Altogether,that's a powerful combination

Watch the trailer YOU have to love the ways that traditional and modern cultureentwine in Japan. Departures is a film about the rituals ofdeath from a director who started in porn and a writer who workedon Iron Chef, that wacky TV show about competitive cooking.Neither career path is unusual in Japanese cinema. And yet theirfilm is so imbued with traditional attitudes and values that itmakes you wonder how deep the layer of modernity really is. A cherry blossom in such a film is inevitable. It's like code toa Japanese audience. The cherry blossom comes in spring to remindthe Japanese that life is renewed after winter, then it diesquickly. In appreciating that transience, the Japanese seek todefine themselves. It's easy, then, to believe they take theirdeath rituals seriously, although one of the surprises ofDepartures is that it's funny at leastinitially. Advertisement: Story continues below The second half is doggedly sad and sentimental. Altogether,that's a powerful combination. That may be part of why it won the2009 Oscar for best foreignlanguage film, although I'd like tothink it was because of the movie's great humanity. Daigo Kobayashi (the handsome Masahiro Motoki, a former teenidol) loses his job as a cellist in Tokyo after the orchestrafolds. He sells his expensive cello, aware he'll never make the topgrade, and moves back to his home town. His wife, Mika (RyokoHirosue), cheerfully agrees to live in the traditional house leftby his mother, who died two years earlier. Daigo sees a job advert for an Rosetta Stone Software agency working with "departures".The boss, Mr Sasaki (Tsutomu Yamazaki), hires him instantly,without looking at his rsum. Only then does the docileDaigo learn that he's not working for a travel agent but an"encoffinator". The ad should have said "the departed", the bossexplains, not "departures". Daigo's first job is to play the corpse in a DVD made "for thetrade". Sasaki explains the procedures to camera as he washes thebody. He then dresses the increasingly disquieted "corpse" whilekeeping it covered. "Take great care that the relatives do not seethe naked body," Mr Sasaki says to camera, dean, after he plugsthe orifices with wads of cotton. This is actually the second time we have seen the procedureso we know what is happening. The opening scene shows Daigoand his boss attending the rural home of a beautiful young womanwho has committed "suicide by charcoal", meaning that she hasbreathed the fumes in a closed room. The grieving relatives watchas Daigo goes to work solo for the first time. Mr Sasaki kneelsbeside him as he enfolds the woman's hands on top of a quilt. Hebegins to cleanse the body with a sterile cloth, moving gentlyunder the quilt with infinite care and respect. He stops abruptlyas he reaches the lower parts of the body. He withdraws the clothand whispers to the boss. With great delicacy, the boss inquires ofthe parents if the deceased is to be dressed in women's or men'sclothes. The ritual of preparing the body is the movie's central dramaticpiece. We see it many times and each time we understand a littlemore. The process is incredibly intricate and poised, like a teaceremony for the dead. The grieving relatives are expected to watchas the loved one is made ready for the "final journey". The job used to be done by the family in olden times, explainsthe boss's assistant, a former bar girl (Kimiko Yo). "Casketing" isnow a niche market because the funeral directors don't want to doit. There are strong taboos about touching the dead, as we begin tosee when Daigo's wife finds out what his new job entails. Shedemands that he get a respectable job. The problem is that Daigohas begun to see the beauty in what he does. He has learnt how tomake the dead look their best and he has seen how his work helpsthe families to say goodbye. "You were born to do this job," theboss tells him. Departures is made in a commercial, rather than strictlyarthouse, style. It uses voiceover narration when none is reallynecessary.

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