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| AFTERLIFE. Starring - Arata - Oda Erika - Susumu Terajima - Naito Taketushi. Director - Kore-Eda Hirokazu. 1998. In Kore-Eda Hirokazu's "After Life", you don't go straight to heaven after you die. You spend a week at a way station, where you have to pick your fondest memory, which will be recreated on film and become your only memory in eternity. If you cannot make up your mind, you will need to work at the station till you figure it out. In short, you get a shortcut to hell. The so-called way station looks more like your old college dormitory than some postmortem dimension. No fluffy clouds, just solid concrete in the middle of the woods. Apparently, Director Kore-Eda Hirokazu wants to give us some fun by shooting heaven like Earth. The first half of the film is like a documentary, where 'new arrivals' talk to their interviewers about their lives. A girl talks about Disneyland, an old man recalls his first bowl of rice during the closing months of WWII, others talk about childhood, some men about sex. It's kind of interesting, but only for an hour or so. I can imagine how life will suck if I have to work as an interviewer and listen to that kind of stuff day after day. In fact, although this film has an interesting premise, it feels more or less like a quasi-feel-good picture. Everyone is so likable, and they always talk about pleasant, symbolic stuff. Your fondest memory is your friend sharing her pancake with you? Yeah, right. Some of the other stuff are downright pretentious, like this old lady who picks flowers and seeds in the garden and just would not talk about anything other than how beautiful the sceneries are. What, you think you are Yoda or something? The filming process is incredibly silly. It may be a homage to filmmaking, but what exactly is the point of recreating a memory using low tech props and studio sets? Take for example this guy whose fondest experience is flying in a plane, and look what he got -- a wooden plane model, some cotton as clouds, and a giant fan for wind. It's really a bad joke, but instead of beating the crap out of the "film crew," the man actually sits happily in the plane like he's having a great time. You see, the characters of this film are little more than plot devices that exist only to deliver us some feel-good moments. Now the man's dream has 'come true,' he should be happy, touched and eternally grateful. Forget the whole damn set does not look the least bit like the real thing. You may sense a lot of dissatisfaction in this review. Well, seriously I wasn't feeling all that great after watching this movie, since it's little more than just a bucket of feel-good crap built on a potentially intriguing premise. The reason why I find this film to be worth the ride is because there is a romantic arc involving an interviewer played by the gorgeous Erika Oda. That scene where she kicks the snow on the roof is worth half the ticket price, and for a review, one full star. 7*******stars. © 2002 Geeky Marcus. NATURAL BORN VIEWERS. |
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