Death is the business of the living - "The Undertaker".
○ "The dream that I believed in before may not be a dream at all."
Kobayashi Dawu probably fell into the lowest point of his life, the band he settled in suddenly disbanded, and he couldn't repay the large sum of money he borrowed to buy a cello. As a man, he could only Sitting at home in a daze in despair.
Go back to the country, he said.
Selling the cello I just bought was like selling a long-held dream, but unexpectedly, I was relieved. The cello, which was forced by his father to learn since he was a child, is a tool to settle down when he grows up. When proposing marriage, he said that he would travel to various cities while playing. I finally took a breath and meditated, maybe it wasn't a dream at all.
This is just an introduction, but it is undeniable that the cello runs through it as a very important image in the film. What is worth savoring is that when Dawu sold the cello he bought with a lot of money, sold his extravagant "dream", returned to his former home in the country, and played the much smaller cello in his childhood, he seemed to pick up on the warmth of humanity. With the "dream" of life and death, isn't it?
○ "The last thing a person buys in his life is determined by others."
Such a thing is a coffin.
Dawu found a job in the newspaper, went for an interview excitedly, and passed it in a confused way, only to find that the job content and the "help travel, NK club" printed in the newspaper were irrelevant, "help embark on the journey, Nohkan (entering mortuary) club" is really a bad joke.
Washing the face of the deceased, changing clothes, putting on makeup, and letting him/her go to another world in peace, this is the job of the mortuary. Do you do it or not? In other words, do you dare or dare?
Dawu is not a person who sees through life and death, or at first he was only forced by money, so he vomited, panicked, and even eagerly sought the real touch of life when he came into contact with the first corpse. When it comes to death, funerals, and burials, people inevitably react negatively. It's also no wonder that Mei Xiang couldn't accept her husband's real job when she heard about it, and her friend showed a look of contempt after hearing about it.
What is the matter of death, few people can laugh about. Imagine lying on the cold ground or turning into a pile of dust and ashes, no one will not tremble, but when we really meet someone in the funeral industry facing death, we put on an "ah, dirty" face again Come on, forget that everyone ends up in the same way.
It's like the three coffins in the NK club, with different materials, decorations, and prices, but in fact the people lying there are the same, and the results are the same. In the end, the last thing I bought in my life was someone else picking it out for me, as Dawu said, a bit ridiculous, isn't it?
○ "Rejuvenate someone who is already cold and give her eternal beauty. It must be calm, accurate, and with tender emotions."
Tenderness is probably the main theme of this film.
This is a standard Japanese-style movie, with warmth and slow gurgles. People who like it say that it's touching, and people who don't like it say that it's an old Japanese routine. In short, it's a double-edged sword.
However, it is undeniable that it was this kind of tenderness that pierced the hearts of Oscar's old men with a sword, and also moistened the dry tear glands of many people. Like me.
I don't want to use the word "moved", as if I can't answer the question "When did you start crying", because tears flow out unconsciously, it is a certain part of the body, and it flows continuously from where come out. It's probably every time the mortuary, every death, every time when the returnees gather around the coffin to say goodbye, when the mortuary uses his hands to put on the deceased's favorite lipstick, the irritable man cried and said thanks. When the mother and child kissed the face of their dead father, cried and laughed and said thanks, when they put on silk scarves for the proprietress of the bathhouse, when they finally buried their father after a thousand turns. It was when the round pebble fell.
I couldn't help but think that maybe it wasn't the movie itself that I cried, but death but humanity, and maybe it wasn't fear and sadness that I cried, but the peace of life that was inevitable and death. It's like my favorite part of the movie, under the performance of the cello, the scenes of the funeral are interspersed with the dancing of swans and the flying of birds in a montage style. Does that indicate the chain of life and death, I think.
○ "Death may be a door. The passing away is not the end, but the transcendence and the next journey."
After going around, he still returned to the topic of death. I have to admit that focusing the camera on such a cold topic and such a cold career as an undertaker is probably a big reason for the success of this film. However, being cold does not mean that it is meaningless. In fact, many people lack the ultimate thinking about life, and whether they have never, unwilling, or dared to ask questions about life and death. Although the film is not perfect, at least it leads us to think.
What I think is the most shocking is that the two old people in the play, the old mortuary and the undertaker, two people who calmly explain death, have been close to death many times. When the incinerator was turned ON, the son cried out in a heart-wrenching way, and the old man's heart, as usual, meditated: "Be careful on the road, we will see you again."
In fact, many plots in the play have long been I expected, for example, that the death of the bathhouse owner was for my father's burial, but when I actually faced it, I couldn't stop the tears and tremors. Maybe it was because I took death lightly. When Dawu carefully arranges the appearance of the deceased, gently puts on the shroud, and carefully paints the makeup, that tenderness and meticulousness are respect for death and respect for life.
At the end of the story, Dawu personally buried his father who had abandoned him for decades. Mingming couldn't remember his face for a long time, and Mingming was very angry with him, but while carefully painting the makeup, tears fell—— The misty memory condensed into a concrete painting, and the gentle face was in front of him at the moment. When the pebble held tightly in my father's hand fell, the bond between father and son, the warmth of human nature, and the peace of life and death also fell gently - even if it appeared as unrealistic as playing a cello on a field ridge, I I still think it's a very beautiful symbol. Especially at the end, under the backlight, Dawu and Mika held the pebble close to the baby in their womb. This was probably another form of death.
In such a movie, there is a lot of death but not a lot of sadness, a lot of warmth but also a lot of tears. The Japanese took away the Oscar statuette with their view of life and death, so let me end with our Chinese view of life and death:
relatives or Yu Bei, others have also sang. What is the way to die, the body is the same as the mountain.
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