Academy Award® winner for Best Foreign Language Film, Departures is a delightful journey into the heartland of Japan as well an astonishingly beautiful look at a sacred part of Japan's cultural heritage.
Departures follows Daigo Kobayashi, a devoted cellist in an orchestra that has just been dissolved and who is suddenly left without a job. Daigo decides to move back to his old hometown with his wife to look for work and start over. He answers a classified ad entitled “Departures” thinking it is an advertisement for a travel agency only to discover that the job is actually for a Nokanshi , a traditional funerary celebrant who prepares bodies for entry into the next life. While his wife and others despise the job, Daigo takes a certain pride in his work and begins to perfect the art of Nokanshi , acting as a gentle gatekeeper between life and death, between the departed and the family of the departed. Daigo experiences a profound and sometimes comical journey as he uncovers the wonder, joy and meaning of life and living.
Release Date: 17/02/2010 Languages: Japanese Genre:Drama Subtitles: English subtitles Runtime: 131.0 mins Format: DVD, Region 4 (PAL) Catalogue:
MMA8010
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What the national critics are saying...
½ "DEPARTURES won this year's Academy Award® for best foreign film. And no doubt it deserved to... The film seems to me to be something very close to a masterpiece... At once simple and profound, DEPARTURES is a film of surpassing beauty and strangeness, bravely imagined and brilliantly accomplished, and in its final moments almost unbearably moving." Evan Williams, WEEKEND AUSTRALIAN
½ "I found myself crying... there's just so much affection and the performances all through are just beautiful. Beautiful. I love this film." Margaret Pomeranz, AT THE MOVIES
"Beautifully acted and classically filmed, DEPARTURES is a gentle, wise, immensely appealing film." David Stratton, AT THE MOVIES
"... don't forget the tissues - there wasn't a dry eye in the house." Hanna Mills, MX MELBOURNE
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