MOVIE · 2008

Departures

Drama130 min

Masahiro Motoki is Daigo, a cellist whose orchestra collapses, sending him and his wife back to his small hometown in Japan to start over. A classified ad for “departures” sounds like travel work, but the interview leads instead to a job preparing the dead for burial as an undertaker’s assistant. Under the eye of Tsutomu Yamazaki’s exacting mentor, Daigo learns the formal rituals of encoffining while trying to hide the work from people who recoil at it, including his wife. Between funerals, cello music, and the awkwardness of starting over, the story stays close to the ceremony and social taboo surrounding death.