# Wandafuru raifu (1998)

### reviewed by
Richard Scheib

    AFTER LIFE

Japan. 1998. Director/Screenplay - Kore-eda Hirokazu, Producers - Akieda Masayuki & Sato Shiho, Photography - Sukita Masayoshi & Yamazaki Yutaka, Music - Kasamatsu Yasuhiro. Production Company - TV Man Union. Arata, Naito Taketoshi, Oda Erika, Terajima Susumu, Naito Takashi, Tani Kei

Plot: In the afterlife a group of workers deal with an assortment of newly arrived dead. Each of the new arrivals has one week in which to select their single favourite memory so that the afterlife workers might reconstruct and then videotape it and the arrivals can then pass on and inhabit that memory. But many of the arrivals have some difficulty choosing a memory.

This marvellous little Japanese film has a quiet effectiveness that kind of creeps up on you afterwards. The whole film comes with a sublime simplicity to it. It's vision of the afterlife is conducted with a wonderful minimalism - this entire afterlife takes place not in Grecian palaces in the sky or even the grandiose visions of classical artwork come to three-dimensional life as in the recent ‘What Dreams May Come', but rather in what looks like a disused schoolhouse. There is almost nothing to the film other than a series of vignettes with various people standing about being interviewed - and almost despite which, the film manages to be an absolute delight.

The interview scenes are conducted with an endearing sense of humour - the old lady who says nothing and simply looks out the window, the teenage girl who wants her trip to Disneyland recreated, the young punk who immediately announces he is refusing to choose anything. Director Hirokazu has a genuine affection for the banality and foibles of the people's lives and the film manages to paint each of its subjects with considerable amusement yet also a quiet dignity.

Unlike ‘What Dreams May Come', ‘After Life' makes no pretense to any profound insights into the afterlife or human spiritual condition. But the two films, each in their own way, both manage to offer unique and thoughtful humanist revisions of classical afterlife imagery . Although quite the opposite of ‘What Dreams', ‘After Life'‘s vision of the hereafter comes with an enchanting banality, one where the afterlife volunteers have as many clues as to why they are as anybody else does. The latter quarter of the film is highly amusing when it comes to the recreation of each person's memory and in the sheer mundanity of the afterlife volunteers' attempts to get the details right - not having the right plane for one memory scenario and having to saw the wing off the plane they do have and then send pieces of cotton wool past on wires to represent clouds; or a tram scenario being revealed as a mockup being rocked by two of the volunteers. Quite a charming film.

Reviewed at the Vancouver 1998 International Film Festival Copyright 1998 Richard Scheib

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