ABSTRACT
The opening sequence of Departures (Okuribito, Yōjirō Takita, Japan, 2008) mixes the gravity of a funeral service with a strangely comic moment, creating an uneasiness that remains pervasive throughout the film. As the family looks on, a mortician wipes the body of a deceased person with a cleaning cloth beneath a draping sheet. Suddenly, he stops in visible tension, stunned at discovering the male organs of the presumed female corpse. The film then flashes back to the story of how this man has become a mortician. We watch as, no sooner has he, Daigo Kobayashi (Masahiro Motoki), finally landed what he believes to be his dream job as a cellist that the orchestra is dissolved. At home that evening, his wife Mika (Ryōko Hirosue) enters with an octopus that a fisherman who lives next door has given them to eat. The newly unemployed Daigo reluctantly admits to his wife that they are in deep debt for his expensive cello. Mika’s worry deepens and she goes to prepare supper. In an instant, the silence is shattered and the anxiety increases as she screams from the kitchen. The octopus is alive and slithering across the floor! The couple can only watch, at a loss for what to do. Should they kill it and eat it as planned? In some way the octopus seems to mimic their struggle. They decide to give it a chance and take it to a nearby river that flows through the city. However, to their disappointment, the octopus only floats lifelessly as it spreads out and drifts on the surface of the water. Watching this, Daigo abruptly announces that he wants to quit playing the cello for a living, and move back to his hometown Yamagata in rural northern Japan. Mika agrees. The next day, Daigo sells his cherished cello to a music store and prepares to leave the city.
