The time is a certain week in winter, and the location is an abandoned building, which they call "Paradise Transit Station". There are three groups of characters: the dead, the angel and the photographer.
The deceased came to the transit station in heaven, and the angel told the deceased to tell them the most important memory in their life before Wednesday (Water Day), and then they and the photographer would recreate the memory for the deceased, and then let the deceased be promoted. go to heaven.
Most people speak out their important memories smoothly, but some people are either unable to find their important memories, or are unwilling to speak their important memories.
A week has passed, except for one deceased, the 21-year-old young man who chose not to speak out because he wanted to be responsible for his memory, and stayed in the transit station in heaven as an angel, everyone else ascended to heaven smoothly. Mochizuki, who was originally an angel, also ascended to heaven because he found his important memory. In fact, the angels themselves are the deceased who have been unable to find or are unwilling to give important memories.
Then a new week begins again.
The important memories of each deceased are intriguing. The one that impressed me the most was the memory of a cool breeze blowing in from the window on a hot bus. I also have a similar experience. When the air is too hot or stagnant, a cool breeze blows in. It is a feeling of comfort throughout the whole body. , was rescued by the wind.
The film also touches on heavy historical topics, such as the Pacific War, the Lugouqiao Incident and the Korean riots. Big history becomes the background of personal experience and is projected into personal memories. The 21-year-old Iseya, who was reluctant to make a choice, told the 71-year-old Watanabe on the morning of Wednesday's final decision on what his generation thinks of the older generation: There is no need to hide his insecurities. And dress better. The implication is that people just want to live a more magnanimous life, and there is no need to compare with others. After hearing this, Mr. Watanabe chose his important memory: the appointment on the park bench with his wife Kyoko to go to the movies in the future.
As the fiancée of Mochizuki, the angel in charge of Watanabe, Kyoko married Watanabe after Mochizuki's death. After Kyoko got married, every year on Mochizuki's death day, she would go to Mochizuki's grave by herself. Perhaps because of this, Watanabe felt that in his wife's heart, his status was always inferior to Mochizuki's. This is Watanabe's "not self-confidence". Watanabe compares himself with Mochizuki. This has not changed until the end. In Watanabe's letter to Mochizuki, Watanabe said: It is false to say that I am not jealous, but after all I've been with Kyoko for so long.
Kyoko, Mochizuki and Watanabe, these three people are small people under the background of the times. Compared with their own joys and sorrows, war seems to be more important. However, the film negates the importance of war, this negation Not directly, but through the mouth of a young man, a kind of counter-training to the old man, saying: There is no need for you to compare and compare, although it is human nature, but there is no need to do so. This may be to say that the inflated national sentiment is a manifestation of lack of self-confidence. Moreover, when Mr. Watanabe was young, he kept saying that he wanted to change Japan. Of course, the film does not give more information about the specific claim of this "change".
Out of this criticism of comparative psychology, Iseya, a 21-year-old young man, made this declaration: "It's not that I can't choose, but that I don't choose. This is how I take responsibility for my life." This sentence can be interpreted as every life memory is equally important, can not choose the most important one. It can also be interpreted that people are willing to choose their own memories as beneficiaries or victims, but forget that they also have memories of being a perpetrator. If they forget the memories of hurting others, is it irresponsible. So, how can you compare? There are trade-offs to compare, and trade-offs may be unethical. Trivial things are not less important than macroscopic things, so you can see that the movie is full of praises for sunshine, temperature, wind, clouds, moon, and flowers.
We do not deny the greatness of big things, but trivial things are the end of life. At the end of life, it is the most important. It is true that this is related to the fact that most people are ordinary people, but in a world where there are many ordinary people, ordinary life is more normal, and normality is important, at least it should achieve the same status as legendary experience.
The film was released in 1998. It was Hirokazu Koreeda who was 26 years old at the time (born in 1962), the same age as Iseya, who was 21 years old.
However, the real world is realistic, advocating great things, and trivial small greatness can only be committed to the daily life, how to enlarge it? Only rely on movies. This may be why Hirokazu Kore-eda wants to portray such a group of filmmakers serving the dead in the film. Film workers are just a group of people who magnify the small routines in life and become small greats. Kawashima (Shinji Terajima) yelled when his work couldn't go on: "Why do we have to work hard to reproduce our memories!" This question was thrown to the audience, and Hirokazu Koeda should have an answer long ago, that is, Those memories are important and worth keeping.
But after taking it, a roll of film is left, what's the use? No, if death doesn't die, the film will disappear one day. But the attitude towards life should not be like this. Death is an objective fact, but in addition, death should be ignored. At least people should imagine that death does not exist, so that some good things will be created. Some people say that it is death that drives people to create more beauty in a limited time. I disagree with this statement, because immortality deprives existence of the right to exist. If people know that all this will disappear sooner or later, why bother creating? Some people say that I can guarantee that the beauty that I create will exist beautifully until I die, but this seems to be a kind of thinking of "even if the flood is terrifying after I die".
Death is what overshadows everything. But human beings are imaginative, and this is the beginning of transcendence.
Humans can imagine the non-existence of death and the non-existence of destruction. And then we fight death with transcendence. That's why it's important to shoot. Through filming, the deceased finally ascends to heaven and becomes immortal. Movies are that kind of thing, a mechanism against death.
I'm tired of writing, so let's do this for now.
P.S. some details
Feeling that Mochizuki was about to leave her, Shiori kicked the snow on the snow, and the snow splashed, just like her cold and resentful mood. The latter shot shows her curled up in the hot tub, looking vulnerable and hurt.
View more about After Life reviews
