After Life

Drama

Takashi Mochizuki
Shiori Satonaka
Satoru Kawashima
Arata	Takashi Mochizuki, counsellor
Erika Oda	Shiori Satonaka, trainee counsellor
Susumu Terajima	Satoru Kawashima, counsellor
Takashi Naitô	Takuro Sugie, counsellor
Kyôko Kagawa	Kyoko Watanabe, Ichiro's Wife
Kei Tani	Kennosuke Nakamura, boss
Taketoshi Naitô	Ichiro Watanabe, who cannot choose his favourite experience
Toru Yuri	Gisuke Shoda, who talks about sex
Yusuke Iseya	Yusuke Iseya, who refuses to choose his experience
Sayaka Yoshino	Kana Yoshino, talks about Disneyland
Kazuko Shirakawa	Nobuko Amano, who talks about her affair with a married man
Kotaro Shiga	Kenji Yamamoto, who wants to forget his past
Hisako Hara	Kiyo Nishimura, old lady who loves cherry blossoms
Sadao Abe	Ichiro
Natsuo Ishido	Kyoko Watanabe as a young woman
Tomomi Hiraiwa	Receptionist
Tae Kimura	Dining Hall Worker
Yasuhiro Kasamatsu
Akio Yokoyama	Security Guard
Miyako Yamaguchi	Dining Hall Worker
Oda Erika
Shirakawa Kazuko
Tani Kei
Shoda Kisuke
Iseya Yusuke
Hara Hisako
Terajima Susumu
Naito Takashi
Naito Taketoshi

Director	Hirokazu Koreeda; Kore-Eda Hirokazu
Producer	Masayuki Akieda; Shiho Sato; Akieda Masayuki; Sato Shiho
Writer	Hirokazu Koreeda; Kore-Eda Hirokazu

This unpretentious, endearing film is a modest triumph. Based on interviews with more than 500 people about the one memory they would choose to take with them to heaven, Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-Eda has modeled a unique blend of documentary and fiction that addresses the vagaries of memory but also what it means to make films. After Life transpires in a sort of way station where the dead must select one memory to be re-created on film and taken on with them forever, relinquishing everything else. Over the span of a week, a dedicated group of caseworkers tease out self-deceptions as well as real epiphanies from 22 different lives. An old woman remembers reuniting with her husband on a crowded bridge after World War II; a man recollects the breeze felt on a tram ride the day before summer vacation; a successful man faces his own treachery. Remembering becomes a courageous act in the casual exposition of this lovely film. --Fionn Meade

From The New Yorker
Newly dead people assemble in a kind of limbo (it looks like an old school) and are asked to choose, after a polite interview, a single memory of happiness. A celestial film crew then makes a movie of that moment, and the shade is allowed to live with the memory for all eternity. In this sombre, delicate Japanese fantasy, written and directed by Kore-eda Hirokazu (a former documentary-maker), the light is gray and even, the emotions tranquil, the politeness exquisite. Hirokazu has no interest in orgiasts or roller-coaster riders: the cherished moment, it turns out, may be nothing more than a passing mood of pleasure-a breeze felt at a window-or a pleasure given rather than one received. The picture raises a marvellous, fanciful question: Are all movies simply the favorite dreams of the dead? With Naito Taketoshi as a fastidious elderly man whose life was too uneventful to yield an easy choice. In Japanese. -David Denby
Copyright 2006 The New Yorker