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Rating: Have you ever wondered what comes after death? How many times have you heard about Heaven and Hell? Have you ever seen those preachers on TV telling you about the terrible tortures that a sinner will face and the immense blessings that a believer will enjoy? How many movies have you watched that reference in increasingly delirious ways the Kingdom of Heaven and the Underworld? How many times have you endured Bonolis and De Laurenti in the Lavazza Paradise? But do you believe in it?
What if, instead, it was all simpler? What if, once dead, you found yourself in front of a sort of farmhouse amidst trees and fog, still wearing your clothes and all your accessories as if you were still in full health? Wouldn't you want to go in? A lady at the reception desk tells you to take a seat in a little room with 21 other people, and once you're there, a young man invites you to his office and opens with a cheerful: "You died yesterday." The friendly young man tells you that this is the place you end up for a week once you're dead; until Wednesday, you have time to choose the most beautiful memory of your life, after which he and his collaborators will recreate this memory like a scene from a movie where you are, of course, the protagonist. On Saturday, the film will be screened for you in a little room, and from there you can enter your marvelous memory and relive it forever.
I'm not crazy, not completely at least, because to watch this film, I had to endure it in Japanese with English subtitles. Yes, it seems like madness, but believe me, it's worth it. In an era where Hollywood increasingly turns to sequels, prequels, stories from comics, adaptations of more or less famous books, biopics, remakes of classic films, remakes of oriental films, remakes of TV series, remakes of remakes of remakes, it seemed right to give a chance to a filmmaker unknown to me, Hirokazu, who a few years ago produced a decidedly original film like this After Life (but if it's ugly to translate English titles into Italian, isn't it equally wrong to translate Japanese titles into English?).
The director adopts a very unique style, a sort of a cross between a real movie and a documentary because of the scenes shot mostly with a camera that keeps making small imprecise movements. Background music is almost entirely absent as if to remind once again that it is reality and not fiction. The story I narrated earlier is not the only one present in the film because within it moves a very strange love story (don't think of tear-jerking scenes and couples in trouble, here we're on a whole different level) accompanied by the various fantastic memories of each deceased person.
"Recreating the memory for the dead," says one of the people engaged in this sort of post-mortem limbo about what is done in that place. And it's precisely this recreation that is most striking: you witness a real making of other films in a very artisanal and genuine way. Thus the clouds for the airplane scene will consist of huge cotton balls while the tram on which a man sits, savoring the sweet spring breeze reproduced by a fan and a few drops of water, will get a sense of movement from people outside making it sway and from a tape that, together with some foley artists, reproduces the classic city sounds.
With some ironic cues, a manic attention to certain small details to always give an impression of reality, and some refinements like the Moon seen by the protagonist which turns out not to be real but another level of artificial recreation, the director takes us by the hand towards this sort of journey, so that even we, like the dead in the film, can enter the vision and get lost believing it's all real.
Awaiting an expensive Hollywood remake (as if they wouldn't seize the juicy opportunity), amidst phantasmagoric locations, superspecial effects, and overpaid actors (but the dreamy old lady, a nature lover from this film, cannot be replaced by anyone, I'm sorry) enjoy this fantastic film and ask yourself if you would be able to choose your most beautiful memory in three days.
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