After Life – Film Review

In this acclaimed Japanese film, a group of people who have recently died find themselves in a limbo realm resembling a relatively mundane building. Counselors, including Takashi (Arata) and Shiori (Erika Oda), are on hand to help new arrivals pick one memory from their lives to bring with them into eternity. Once the memories are chosen, the staff makes a short film representing each one, and the films make up a collage of thoughtful cinematic moments.

Hirokazu Kore-eda‘s After Life is one of the most fascinating movies I have ever seen in my life, and I’m genuinely upset that I didn’t know about it sooner. But, to be completely honest, maybe it’s a good thing that I didn’t get around to watching it until now because I’m almost certain that if I watched this when I was, let’s say fifteen, I wouldn’t have appreciated this movie nearly as much as I should have.

It’s an extremely unconventional story and one that could be tackled in a number of ways. For example, if this film was made today by some popular director, I can promise you that it would be nothing like the film that we actually ended up getting back in 1998. Kore-eda’s film is, interestingly enough, brimming with life and soul in virtually every single scene. The idea to have these people be dead, yet their souls talking to the camera and explaining their life’s best memories is extremely heartwarming and devastating simultaneously.

We know these characters are dead, yet they still look so happy. They don’t wear faces of shame, regret, or sorrow. They understand fully that they are deceased, but they instead choose to focus on all of the good parts that came with their life. Of course, the film’s plot gets extremely complicated and sometimes it’s a little bit too much to take in, but I greatly appreciated Kore-eda for writing and directing such a powerful and non-traditional story.

There’s also something so enchanting about the way this film looks, as well. Yutaka Yamazaki‘s cinematography here is certainly a thing of beauty (the film is absolutely jam-packed with stunning shots), but a large part of this film’s comforting feel comes from its lighting. After Life is an incredibly cold-looking movie. There isn’t a single scene with any highly vibrant colors, and every time a character is seen outside, it almost always looks windy and gloomy outside. Yet, for some reason, the film feels like a big old warm blanket.

All of the performances here are also terrific, but most notably from Arata who portrays Takashi Mochizuki. His character is easily the one that gets the most to do throughout the course of the story, and Kore-eda definitely took the character in an interesting path to say the least. Other actors who are great in this film include Erika Oda, Susumu Terajima, Taketoshi Naito, Kei Tani, Kazuko Shirakawa, and Sayaka Yoshino.

Everybody that worked on this film clearly had quite a passion for it, wanting to tell a highly unconventional story. One that would be equal parts inspiring, uplifting, heartwarming, and emotional all at the same time. Oftentimes, this simply doesn’t work, and you end up with a film that feels like it’s trying to be twenty different movies all in the span of just two hours, and yet After Life feels shockingly coherent. It it most definitely a marvelous movie and one that I am not going to be forgetting about any time soon.