One Piece: On (Hirokazu) Kore-Eda, (Takeshi) Kitano and Some Lighter Moments in Contemporary Japanese Cinema

As an ardent filmviewer, I am constantly made aware during the rest of the year of how lucky we are in Toronto to have the opportunity to see films deemed noncommercial by the distribution industry. Although it means a very intense 10 days in September, during which all else gets put on hold--certainly a difficult but not surmountable problem for me, given that my day job as a high school teacher kicks in at precisely the same time as the festival's brief run--the sacrifice is well worth it. Last year, the Toronto Film Festival's spotlight on contemporary Japanese cinema opened up a whole new world of film to me. In fact, the single film that most impressed me at the 1998 festival was After Life, by Hirokazu Kore-eda, a film whose premise sounded somewhat contrived in terms of its requirements for the suspension of disbelief. However, in spite of this, it proved to be one of the most remarkable and powerful films that I have seen. After Life takes place at a way station for people who have just died. Here, they are interviewed by caseworkers who help them to select a single memory from their past life that they will relive forever in their afterlife, with the understanding that all else will be stricken from their minds. These memories are then recreated as accurately as possible with stage sets and actors, and videotaped. At the end of the week's stay at the way station, there is a final screening of these films; as their film-memories are projected, the people pass on to their afterlife. In preparation for the film, Kore-eda interviewed hundreds of elderly Japanese, asking them to perform the same task set the characters in his film: that is, to recount the one memory they would choose to relive for eternity. He then wrote the script drawing on these chosen moments. The first part of the film contains a series of brief scenes, each consisting of a closeup of a seated person facing the viewer-as-interviewer and speaking directly to us about their memories of the past. For these, Kore-eda used a combination of actors working from scripts, actors recounting their own experiences, and real people telling true stories. The film's narrative has its protagonist, Mochizuki, a case worker who appears to be in his early 20s. He is given the task of assisting Watanabe, a 70 year old man unable to find the one memory that stands out from the rest of his very ordinary and uneventful life. As the film unfolds, it becomes evident to Mochizuki that the two men's lives are in fact entwined; we learn that the younger man was Watanabe's wife's first love who had been killed during the second world war. This revelation leads Mochizuki to find at last the one memory that he wants to relive in perpetuity, and so he, too, leaves at the end of the week. However, After Life is much more than just the story of the connection between Mochizuki and Watanabe. Kore-eda's concern is in investigating the construction and meaning of memory in and to an individual's life. His previous films reflected this interest: Maborosi (1995), his first fiction film, dealt poignantly with a young woman's attempt to come to terms with the inexplicable death of her husband and her memories of their life together; Without Memory (1996), was a documentary film that followed a man suffering from medically-induced short term memory loss and the impact it had on his family and friends as he tried to get assistance. Kore-eda comments in the accompanying notes to After Life that when he was 6, his grandfather became senile. He remarks, As a child, I comprehended little of what I saw, but I remember thinking that people forgot everything when they died. I now understand how critical memories are to our sense of identity, a sense of self. In Camera Lucida, Roland Barthes talked about the ways in which photography serves to capture memories of life that is past, the most poignant images being ones which represent life after death; i. …

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