Barring the last 15 minutes, The Departures walks a tightrope – between the darkest comedy, the macabre and a strong humanist core. It does it with immaculate skill, deftly balancing scenes of visceral humour with poignant moments of characters confronted with death. The simplicity of shot division in the film is its greatest strength – nothing is ever complicated, there are no unnecessary cuts thrown in, the pace of the film is kept beautifully restrained and measured. The performance of the protagonist isn’t the best ever, sometimes I felt it borders on buffoonery, yet maybe that’s what the character required. I’m willing to give it the benefit of the doubt. However, the last 15 minutes is a bit of a let-down – was the father needed at all? Arguable. Did it have to become everything that it was so beautiful avoiding all through – weepy, overtly emotional? Yes indeed it is difficult to accept such an ending in a film which at one point was juxtaposing scenes of a corpse being prepared for encoffining with the enconffiners digging into chicken legs and tearing the meat off the bones! In retrospect a very brave effort – a film which could’ve been a masterpiece but falls just short.