By Robert K. Johnston and Catherine M. Barsotti

Many years ago, Rob remembers the Professor in his seminary theology days suggesting that Christians were unique in valuing the body, not just their disembodied souls. The Triune God created us body-spirits. This respect for the body could be seen by the fact that Christian funerals, at the time, mostly did not hide or burn the body, that wakes were a strong part of our tradition, and that we had Christian committal services.

But death, like life, is often more complex than it might appear. There is, to be sure, in the modern world, whether Eastern or Western, Christian or otherwise, an all too easy denial of death, one that is profoundly unchristian. Even in the church, we tend to downplay the significance of Good Friday for Easter; we have memorial celebrations rather than funeral services; and even at our funerals we often have the caskets closed or absent, for we say we would rather remember the person while still living, rather than see a dead body. And so we anaesthetise ourselves from grief, hiding ourselves from the lifeless body. It seems that their departure from this life into God’s loving arms is too much to bear witness to, even for those of us who believe in Eternity.

But there are exceptions to this general practice, both East and West – examples we can learn from. One such is the Japanese movie Departures (d. Takita, 2008). Based on Shinmon Aoki’s book Coffinman, the film gives us the story of a nakanshi, someone who cleanses and prepares the body of a deceased person for cremation in a ritual performance of ‘encoffinment’. The movie is not simply about death, however, and certainly not about preparation for the afterlife (there is no hint of such in the film). Rather the film is about the shape of life, given death – about respect for the body, about the importance of ritual, the reality of grief, the discovery of vocation, and the possibility of reconciliation. As Yojiro Takita, its director, comments: “…to face death means to be able to reassess one’s life and to see the value of living.”

Departures (Okuribito) won the Academy Award for best foreign-language picture in 2008. Its lyrical ode both to death and to finding one’s place in life proved compelling to audiences and filmmakers alike. The movie tells the story of Daigo Kobayashi (Masahiro Motoki), a cellist who loses his job and his ‘vocation’ as a musician when his Tokyo orchestra shuts down unexpectedly. Having just purchased an expensive cello, but realizing he is ‘not good enough to get another gig’, he is forced to sell his instrument, abandon his music and return with his young wife, Miki (Ryoko Hirosue), to his provincial hometown where his recently deceased mother has left him the family home.

Needing a job, Daigo responds to a newspaper ad soliciting someone to work in ‘departures’, believing it is a travel agency. But the ad has a typo; it should say working with ‘the departed’. The aging owner of the small business, Sasaki (the wonderful actor Tsutomu Yamazaki), is a man of few words, but his offer of a salary is enough to cause Daigo to stay, despite his misgivings and even revulsion at the task he is to be trained to do. Sasaki says little, but as he teaches his new apprentice the art of ‘encoffination’, the ceremonial washing and dressing of the deceased in the presence of the grieving, we see a master artist at work. And so Daigo discovers his true calling as a ‘performer’, someone who uses his artistic sensibility to help others work through their pain and rediscover their joy in living.

Daigo’s apprenticeship is not without its challenges, or humour. Viewers laugh as he is asked to be the ‘corpse’ his boss works on for a training video, and then feel his unease as he must prepare the body of a woman who has been dead for several days. We identify with him as he goes to the baths to scrub off the smell of death before going home for the evening. We grieve with him as his wife fails to accept his new profession and leaves to go back to Tokyo. But we also watch in awe as he perfects his craft, helping one grieving family accept the death of their grandmother by having them put white children’s socks on her hands. We sense his growing contentment as he again takes up the playing of his cello, this time the one he had as a child and which he finds at the homestead. (The cello-dominated score by Joe Hisaishi is hauntingly lovely). And we celebrate with him as his wife returns to him because she is pregnant, and discovers the profundity of her husband’s new calling.

The movie’s surprising ending has a fittingness that increases its emotional impact. Daigo’s reconciliation with his family becomes an invitation for viewers to also deal with their own estrangements and grief.

The intimate connection of life and death, death and life, pervades the movie, impressing on viewers the need to embrace their lives, even as they accept their grief. The respected and senior film critic Andrew Sarris goes so far as to say that Departures is “the most moving film I have ever seen commemorating the bonds between the living and the dead.”

As far back as Sophocles’ Antigone, or as recently as HBO’s Six Feet Under, funerary rituals and practices have been used dramatically to help audiences explore issues of life and death, of body and spirit. Anyone who has recently experienced their own grief over a ‘departure’ will find themselves touched at a deep, even sacramental, level by the film Departures. But all of us will be drawn in to the story through the beauty of its images, its masterful cello-based score, and its simple, yet universal, themes. Here is a must-see.

Images used with permission