Friday, 31 December 2010

Okuribito
[Departures]
(2008)

100%

…leave a good-looking corpse

Taking us into the world of undertakers, this movie alternately offers us our own feelings of revulsion at the physical fact of death as well the humor that naturally comes from this fear as a means of dealing with it. This fear is here particularized as if death were an infectious disease and the mere touching of a corpse would induce death or make one somehow unclean.

The deaths here also concern those of the paths taken in life that lead nowhere and, when this is accepted, are left to die before this acceptance leads-on to new goals and opportunities. Thus, the film is more about grieving than dying; and finding one's true vocation from the ashes of the childhood one must leave behind to die.

The characterization is excellent and serves the themes perfectly. Like Field of Dreams, this understands grief in a way few movies ever dare. Impossible not to be affected by this.


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Science:



No science is immune to the infection of politics and the corruption of power.



Jacob Bronowski… (1908 - 74), British scientist, author. Encounter (London, July 1971).


Sleep of Reason:



The dream of reason produces monsters. Imagination deserted by reason creates impossible, useless thoughts. United with reason, imagination is the mother of all art and the source of all its beauty.



Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes… (1746-1828), Spanish painter. Caption to Caprichos, number 43, a series of eighty etchings completed in 1798, satirical and grotesque in form.


Humans & Aliens:



I am human and let nothing human be alien to me.



Terence… (circa 190-159 BC), Roman dramatist. Chremes, in The Self-Tormentor [Heauton Timorumenos], act 1, scene 1.


Führerprinzip:



One leader, one people, signifies one master and millions of slaves… There is no organ of conciliation or mediation interposed between the leader and the people, nothing in fact but the apparatus - in other words, the party - which is the emanation of the leader and the tool of his will to oppress. In this way the first and sole principle of this degraded form of mysticism is born, the Führerprinzip, which restores idolatry and a debased deity to the world of nihilism.