Heart-gripping, Oscar-winning Yôjirô Takita’s tale about a young cello player turning to funeral ceremonies business grasps your soul and squeezes it out of all emotions. It has it all: throbbing feeling of inevitable human fate, warm and honest characters portrayals, slow-paced narrative with gentle, serious reflection over life and death along with several laughs enlightening the subject. The director managed to step into the most complicated and unstable taboo area in human perception and still not to step onto the fragile material and smash it with his clumsiness. No. The picture balances in an extremely agile manner on the verge of what’s acceptable and what’d be rejected by the human mind accustomed to the comfortable thought of everlasting successful existence in some ideal surroundings. Still, Takita doesn’t play with you but slaps you on the cheek giving conviction that he’s been just patting you on the shoulder.
Death: the picture appoints to the role of a guide in the most delicate excursion towards the acceptance a young leading man who knows nothing of pure joy of being alive and who ignores subject of death, in whatever dimension it would be, but still overcomes his prejudice and fear. Takita takes Daigo on a journey through disgust, tolerance, comprehension and finally respect making you follow his steps and understand or reject them. The full empathy that links the protagonist and the audience in fear, doubt and amazement comes from the performance delivered by Masahiro Motoki. His authentic hold to the character and the story eludes dangerously frequent artificiality being part of strongly emotional scripts which handled without feeling and devotion turn into sentimental flops.
The visual shape of the movie supports in every tiny detail the spiritual and moral line of the story. Every single image is aesthetic and ascetic at the same time, revealing all along the white and pastel palette which underlines the very essence of the picture – its subtlety and its frank humility towards the greatness of life whose part constitutes death, not that hideous and terrifying as we could think but gracious and liberating phenomenon transforming every day into more than special and joyous celebration of life. Only for coming to terms with death on screen, Yôjirô Takita deserves his Oscar, the audience’s attention and, most of all, their respect.
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