The Japanese Departures unexpectedly beat the terrific Austrian revenge saga Revanche (plus the iffy Waltz With Bashir) for this year’s Foreign Film Oscar. And like last year’s winner, The Counterfeiters, it’s a not-uninteresting but fatally flawed audience pleaser—a respectable safe choice that tackles a thorny subject with a lack of rigor but without embarrassing itself.
That subject is Japan’s singularly touchy relationship with death. Masahiro Motoki plays a failed cellist who accidentally winds up working as a nokanshi, or “encoffining master”—a purely Japanese occupation involving a mix of embalming and funeral rites performed in front of the mourners. Given how the uncleanliness of dead bodies disturbs the Japanese, Motoki feels compelled to keep his new profession a secret from his otherwise loving, supportive wife (Ryoko Hirosue).
Like so many films approved of by AMPAS’ reliably unadventurous foreign language committee, Departures follows a ready-made structure: a wacky, near-farcical first half followed by a drippy, tear-streaked second. Early scenes recall a Japanese Six Feet Under, complete with nebbishy mini crises and a dryly funny turn from Tsutomu Yamazaki as the head nokanshi. Motoki hams it up, even going so far as to impersonate Cary Grant’s gift for sudden, eye-bulging reaction shots.
Director Yojiro Takita quasi-notoriously used to make “pink films”; he’s apparently comfortable working multiple genres, even at once. Yamazaki does dispense fuzzy homilies on what really matters and so on. But Takita manages a delicate tone of deep melancholy and hushed reverence, particularly when portraying the nokanshi service in action.
Departures wants your tears, but not too sadistically. In an almost cocky move, Takita even employs the services of winsome Hayao Miyazaki composer Joe Hisaishi, and still his film fails to turn full-on heartbreaker. Would-be tearjerking scenes maintain an understated quality, gently coaxing you to find that spare tissue.B-
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