Burying THE GRUDGE: A movie blog about acceptance and love

Angelika Espejo
Sep 24, 2020
3 min read

From the title, Burying THE GRUDGE. I am not referring to the horror movie the grudge, but the grudge as resentment.

Okuribito or Departures is a Japanese comedy-drama directed by Yōjirō Takita and was released last 2008. The film is a drama that follows the life of an encoffiner or we also called a mortician. The one who prepares a dead person for its wake in a rural area in Japan. A person who cleans a dead body and applies makeup, usually in front of the relatives of that deceased person. Here in the Philippines, we called it “embalsamador”.

SPOILER ALERT!

The story begins with Daigo Kobayashi (Masahiro Motoki), a cellist, a person who plays cello who is in the orchestra that suddenly got disbanded. The story focuses on an unemployed cellist, Daigo. He moved to his hometown, Yamagata, with his wife Mika Kobayashi (Ryoko Hirosue). As a result, in loss of job, he started to find a new one. While eating with his wife, he saw something in the newspaper that captures his eyes. He got his new job as nokanashi— a traditional Japanese mortician. In exchange of getting that job, he receives discrimination. A lot of discrimination from other people. He suffers from the prejudice of those people around him, sadly, Mika his wife, is one of those. But after many events happened, he eventually earns back the respect from people. He also comprehends a deeper meaning of life. He teaches us that life is not just living simply, but also life is learning on how to spend our precious time wisely. LIFE IS SHORT.

The cinematography of Takeshi Hamada is simple. No special effects and filters used. Just like the usual setting of a funeral. Some of the shots were giving us the vibes of freedom like the scene where Daigo played the Cello in an open area. Takita’s music scoring is one of the reasons of the film’s success. The music of the Cello is right for this material. Okuribito is not your typical stylistic drama, but this is a film that is rare because of being well-made. I noticed two themes here in the film. Death and Prejudice. Why do I say so? Death is the element that appears throughout the movie. Okuribito shows us how death has given Daigo a meaning in life, the meaning of life. It even reveals and teaches us acceptance and love, from his father that is no longer affectionate when he performs the ritual with his own father. One more thing is prejudice, this is also one of the predominant themes in the film. It is where Daigo receives unfavorable opinions about his work. When, there is no wrong with his job. It is a decent one. People should stop degrading decent works, because we will never know, one day, that workers will help us.

One more thing I noticed about the film is the opening scene. The opening scene of Daigo and Ikuei (Tsutomu Yamazaki) driving through the haze of a snowy road with only their headlights is the source of lights to see. I may say that this symbolizes their profession. They prepare the dead for their journey to what is beyond.

Okuribito (Departures) won the title in 2008 at the Montreal World Film Festival which the people behind the camera decided to also release it in Japan. The reason why they don’t release it in Japan is because the producers were afraid of the uncertain comments by the Japanese because of the film’s topic “prejudice” because the Japanese community had something against with the morticians. But despite of this, just after one month when they released this in Japan, Okuribito won the Academy Prize for Picture of the Year and in 2009 for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

My Reaction from the movie (LEGIT):