DEPARTURES

One movie this week, surprisingly, and it really wasn't really a complete movie...

Since I go off on rants on the movie watching experience, I might as well explain. My Instant Netflix movie viewing choice is often influenced by the looming expiration date for streaming. If I miss the deadline, the movie I want to see is relegated to my Snail Mail Queue. So the night before Departures was set to expire I dialed it up pretty late... I was pretty darn tired halfway in but I had no choice to stay up and watch. I couldn't split my movie viewing ordeal between an evening and morning like I sometimes do. It turned out the movie was really good... but with 50 minutes remaining, the audio/video got out of sync! Even for a Japanese language movie it was very distracting. So two weeks ago, I had to leave a movie.... wait for it.... UNFINISHED... until the hard copy was mailed to me. So, there is a risk to all this access, at least until the Netflix streaming nerds get their service down perfectly. Anyway...

DEPARTURES (2008)

A unique film, and a Foreign language Film Oscar winner from 2008. For those keeping track, of the 5 Foreign Language film nominees that year, I've now seen 2 (the excellent Revanche, from Austria, is another). I don't recall seeing a non-horror, non-bloody, non-Samurai, non-animated Japanese film in a long while, and it's nice to be reminded that can do human stories just fine, although there's a shifty tone (eyes bug out to show emotional expression, for example) which might be a little off-putting, probably due to cultural differences. It's a little heavy-handed and treacly at times, which was reminiscent of that shallow emotional magic that's a component of a lot of Oscar winners. But the film goes someplace really special and interesting when the camera spends an intimate amount of time depicting grieving families and the funeral rituals that give them some peace.