The afterlife in Hirokazu Koreeda’s After Life is not the white and serene dreamscape of popular perception. It’s an ordinary and sort of musty office building running on regular electricity and appliances. Agents work here creating films based on a particular memory of the deceased’s choosing. They are simply employees, not sprits or angels but ordinary looking people without supernatural powers. One wonders, at first, how they were chosen for the job. This subversion of the heavenly paradise concept at times seems capable of going into the realm of parody, but After Life has pure gentility in its heart.
Questions arise from this place. Where exactly is this building? Is it in the real world? If so, how do the employees get there? What happens if a living person stumbles upon it? What would happen if one of the departed souls were to wander out? We see an elderly woman without a reply when the agents ask her to think of a memory to take with her in the after life. She just looks out the window at the world she is leaving behind. Then we see her outside the office walls in a beautiful autumn garden. Where is this garden? That there are such questions is not a bad thing. After Life is a movie about such philosophical questions.
Of course, the biggest question presented to the departed and to us as viewers is what single memory would we chose to hold onto for all eternity. What’s fascinating about After Life is the variety of memories collected from a diverse group of people. There are plenty of young people, fondly remembering their first ride down Splash Mountain. There is a businessman and an elder worker who remembers a lifetime of labor collecting fruit. There is also an older woman remembering surviving a great earthquake in her youth.
After Life is an unusual movie to come from Japan. Family unit and the identity crisis ensuing after WWII are common themes, but very little is said about death and beyond. Even Ikiru, which dealt with a dying old man’s reflections on life, did so while the character was still alive.
Perhaps because of the disparity of the topic few have given much thought to this hypothetical scenario. One elder client in After Life comments on the difficulty of choosing just one memory. He never thought of that before. Perhaps we all should. In Japan, this may be a side-effect of a nation long struggling to find an identity. After modeling its political structure on the model of Allied forces after WWII, one of the most daunting questions lingering over the nation is what it means to be Japanese.
Some of After Life is comical, as life often is. Most of it is poignant but never sad. The point of the movie is, after all, that life is not only worth living but also full of wonderful moments. After Life believes that such moments exist even in the most humble lives. Maybe even especially in humble lives since simplicity creates more time to look for everyday joys. The memory preserving staff tries to set an example in how they conduct their work. They have none of the supernatural beams one would expect from workers of their title. To recreate memories, they use simple machines.
The memories themselves glow with simple pleasures. One young man fondly remembers playing in the snow surrounding his grandmother’s cottage in the country, explaining why so much of the movie’s last half is set in a snow-covered landscape. Another older man remembers the first time he tried his favorite soup. Another client chose to remember a peculiar dream. These are everyday pleasures that anyone of us can have.
Physically, After Life doesn’t move much. It shouldn’t. It’s a movie about questions. It is made with such great care that it takes time to focus and resolve the questions it brings to the table. It plays like a wondrous kaleidoscope of life fragments.
There is a touching moment when an older man watches the video of his selected memory. He sees himself as a young man, newly married. Following him, the silent old woman comes out of her shell and relives her favorite memory being recreated to film.
For a film of such sweet simplicity, After Life contains some masterful shots. There is a magical moments of whimsy when a young woman walks the city streets of her childhood and beautiful exterior shots in Japanese gardens. This is an incredibly well-made film.
Eventually, After Life answers most of our questions. We learn that the wonder workers of the afterlife are themselves dead. They hadn’t fulfilled their missions in life and were given a second chance to bring happiness to newly departed souls before they can pass on. In this regard, the people they serve are lucky. Whether they know it or not at first, they have led full and productive lives. A single memory is their keepsake from a lifetime that didn’t go to waste.