The dead arrive at a way station where counselors guide them to choose one memory to live with for eternity. The place is an overgrown administration building. After the counselors help the arrivals pick their memories, the film crew recreates the memory and the arrivals watch the tape. After watching the tape, they disappear into the next stage. The counselors await for the new week and the next arrivals.
I love this idea. It's got great potential. However it feels a little like watching some kind of government bureaucracy. No matter how touching it gets. This has a DMV type of pacing. There is one fun section where they are recreating the memories. It could funnier but I like that section. I love this movie idea but two hours is a stretch.
Plot summary
A small mid-20th century social-service-style office is a waystation for the souls of the recently deceased, where they are processed before entering their personal heaven - a single happy memory re-experienced for eternity. Every Monday, a new group of recently deceased people check in, and the "social workers" in the lodge explain their situation. Once the newly-dead have identified their happiest memories, workers design and replicate each person's chosen memory, which is staged and filmed. At the end of the week, the recently deceased watch the films of their recreated happiest memories in a screening room. As soon as each person sees his or her own memory, he or she vanishes to whatever state of existence lies beyond and takes only that single memory with them. The story pays most attention to two of the "counselors," Takashi (Arata) and Shiori (Oda). Takashi has been assigned to help an old man, Ichiro (played by Naito Taketoshi),select his memory. Reviewing videotape of Ichiro's life, Takashi learns that Ichiro had married Takashi's former fiancée after Takashi had been killed during World War II. Takashi has Ichiro assigned to another counselor, but is still troubled by his memories, causing both him and his quasi-romantic interest Shiori to re-examine their (after-) lives.
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love the idea
The Best Moment of Our Lives
Every Monday morning, a team of advisors welcome in a facility a group of people that has just died with the mission of helping each one of them to select their best memory that will last for the eternity in the first three days. On Thursday, filmmakers begin to recreate the selected memory, and in the end of the week they screen it in a movie theater and he or she moves to Heaven.
I bought "Wandâfuru Raifu", or "After Life" on DVD, since I was very intrigued with the summary on its cover. I saw this low budget movie spoken in Japanese with English subtitles and I found the story very original and provocative. The premise of rebuilding eternity along a week, like God created Earth, and Heaven be a projection of a movie of the best memory one could have, is fantastic. In spite of having unexplained points, like for example the need itself of lasting with only one single memory, and inconsistencies, like why the need of shooting the memory, if the staff can bring videotapes of the entire life, what matters is the originality of this unique movie. One point that has always impressed me in cinema is the fact the actors and actresses last forever in the eyes of the audiences along generations. In this movie, each one of us has the chance to be an actor or actress, and write our own screenplay. Further, I personally recalled many good moments of my life just because of the storyline of this movie, and I found how difficult it could be to select only one good moment of my life to last forever. My vote is seven.
Title (Brazil): "Depois da Vida" ("After Life")
incredible
I had only heard a little bit about "Wandafuru raifu" (called "After Life" in English) when it came out, but I was blown away by the movie. Focusing on some people in Japan considering what will be the memory that they take with them when they die, the movie really holds you. The story is somewhere between metaphysical and psychological, but incredible nonetheless. I don't know director Hirokazu Koreeda or any of the cast members, but if this is any indication, they all must be masterful.
All in all, you have to see this movie. You may never feel the same about life or death again.