Search
What's Hot
Day-by-Day Fall Schedule
Idol Winner Speaks!
Jim Parsons Comes Out
Game of Thrones Star's Sex Stare

After Life

1999, Movie, NR, 118 mins

After Life: Review

AFTER LIFE
starstarstarstar
A beautiful meditation on the power and beauty of memories, this second feature from Hirokazu Kore-eda (MABOROSI) is more about a particular pause between life and eternity than about eternity itself. Several harried counselors report to work on a Monday at an oddly archaic institution. Their job: shepherding a group of the recently deceased through the process of selecting a single memory to carry for eternity. At the end of the week, the guides turn filmmakers and recreate each memory in a film. The handsome, if grave, guide Mochizuki (Arata) is assigned to Watanabe (Naito Taketoshi) a particularly boring salaryman filled with ambivalence about his life. The other dead folks represent a cross section of Japanese society (part of Kore-eda's preparation involved interviewing hundreds of diverse Japanese people): a teenage girl who chooses a memory of Disneyland then changes her mind; an old woman with Alzheimer's disease who wanders the grounds picking up leaves and flowers; Iseya (Yuseke Iseya), a defiant punk who refuses to choose. We learn that those who cannot or will not choose a memory remain to become guides themselves. AFTER LIFE is a chatty film, full of descriptions of the sensations and experiences in everyday life, and the large number of characters, their stories and interconnections make for a busier-looking film than MABOROSI. But Kore-eda, who uses his documentary experience to great effect in the interviews with the dead, extracts the most poignant moments out of silence and solitude. The recreations of memories lovingly and reflexively point out that our recollections are often as malleable and dependent on suspension of disbelief as the special effects in a film. leave a comment --Sandra Contreras
Are You Watching?
After Life
Loading ...
Advertisement

Our Partners

Advertisement

Related Websites

You might be also interested in the following websites:

Most Popular TV Shows

  1. American Idol
  2. NCIS
  3. Big Bang Theory
  4. Voice
  5. Person of Interest
more popular tv shows

Most Popular Celebrities

  1. Jessica Simpson
  2. Khloe Kardashian
  3. Kate Middleton
  4. Maria Menounos
  5. Kim Kardashian
more popular celebrities

Most Popular Movies

  1. Avengers
  2. Battleship
  3. The Dictator
  4. Dark Shadows
  5. What To Expect When You're Expecting
more popular movies

Top Videos

  1. Revenge
  2. Days of our Lives
  3. Young and the Restless
  4. The Bachelorette
  5. Modern Family
more top videos