Departures (2009)

Sometimes you don't get to choose what you are good at doing. Sometimes fate gives you a talent or knack and you have to figure out whether you will live into it or in contrast to it.

 I was vaguely aware of this movie when it was released. A Japanese film about a young cellist who has to change his career to be a mortician assistant in the art of preparing the departed for a final farewell from their family and friends.

But my mother has a similar knack to me in serendipitous curiosity and capriciousness, as she picks films that cross her path in her volunteer work at library sales. She watched this film and wanted to see if she could connect with me over it. I was pretty accurate in guessing when the movie has been released, but had missed that it was scored by Joe Hisaishi. Which between my mom's recommendation and the Studio Ghibli composer really interested me.

I finally got time to watch it, and was very affected by its arc. The change in careers was embarrassing for the protagonist, as his orchestra folded just as he secured his dream job, and he has to admit to his young wife that he can't fulfill his proposal's promise to travel the world performing. Instead, he has no job and a deep loan on a professional cello he had invested in faith of his career success. He has a house in his hometown, inherited from his mother who had to covert the business side from a coffee shop to a bar after her husband deserted her when the protagonist was 6.

The protagonist sees an ad in the local newspaper for a good paying job with no experience required, involving "departures." Thinking it has to do with travel, he gets his interview suit ready and shows up to a small office. The office manager summons her elderly boss, the owner of the business, and the owner asks the interviewee if he is willing to work hard for very good pay and hires him on the spot, telling him that the ad was a misprint - it was not "Departures", but "the departed". But he has a good feeling about the kid's ability to do the job, and gives him advance pay.

The rest of the film unfolds slowly, as the character has to reassess whether he is truly suitable for this job. There is a grace and dignity which the owner demonstrates in preparing each of his clients, and there is a draw to seeing a job done well with professionalism and competence. It is beautifully scored, and patient in its shots for the slow reactions of grief and having the honor and responsibility of holding the memories of the friends and family to be reflected in the deceased. Death is a part of life, and it is often something that people shy away from as ingracious, indelicate, and terrifying. This film gives you time to gradually acclimate that there is peace and calm in the unknown, if you are open to learn to handle whatever aspects can be understood and controlled.

This film is cathartic and gives voice to quiet moments where words fall short. 

Hard Truths (2024)

This movie might do more without dialogue than many films do with words. So much of this film's dialogue is unkind and ingracious words that the non-verbal scenes bring attention and relief. And this film is beautiful and tragic by these two contrasts intertwining.

Sometimes life has hard truths and scars run deep, so the healing involves pain to try to address the core issues. 

Pansy is a 60-something African-English woman who has the temperment of a traumatized small dog. She barks at anything that moves, is paranoid that the world is too big and mean for her, and so rarely ventures outside her pristinely clean house. She has Curtley, a henpecked plumber ,for a husband and Moses, her 22-year old unemployed quiet giant of a son. She berates them day and night for whatever they are doing to exist in her house and disturb her peace.

In contrast, Pansy's  53-year old sister, Chantelle, is a hairdresser and single mom to two daughters near their twenties. Their scenes have such intimate joy and pleasure, it is hard not to feel like a fourth member of an in-group in their element. Chantelle's clients feel heard and supported in her chair, and tell her about her lives and hopes with their relationships in life.

These two sisters are the core of the movie, and how they handle day-to-day life and conflict. Pansy's interacts with the world with the sensitivity of an open wound, raising tension with her personal thunderstorm in her wake. Chantelle isn't perfect, but her wake is more of a gentle rain to soothe the soul. Chantelle wants Pansy to visit their mother's grave on a Mother's Day Sunday, urging her to leave her house, do something together, and share a meal.

I saw the trailer for this film in a theater and it looked like a hard pill to witness and swallow. And it is, but I didn't see the representation that was Chantelle and her slow honey from a spoon. Grace is patient and steady, and has a habit of catching those quick to anger by surprise.

I am so glad that I saw this film, though it pulled no punches on the speed bag of cutting remarks, it held in the moments and showed love and compassion in the face of deep fear and careless hatred. The last scene lingers with unspoken tension, and lets the audience sit without commentary for how it will be resolved.

All That Jazz (1979)

I watched "All That Jazz" tonight. I do believe this is one of the most insane accomplishments caught on film.  I am beside myself with awe at the ego and audacity to write something like this and the sheer determination and humble exhibitionist grit to pull it off.

Bob Fosse. I had heard of this choreographer's work before, but had never experienced it. And this is a movie about effortless perfection, and the cost of a body and soul to reach that ideal. 

The film follows Joe Gideon, a creative genius who has spent his whole career defying gravity as a director, choreographer, and writer. But Gideon's story is like multiple Greek characters in their glorious blessing and cursedness at once. Straining ever higher towards the sun like Icarus, with a restless partying hedonism like Dionysus in Gideon's downtime, and the fate of Tantulus in everything at which he grasps is just out of reach of his desire. He has the Midas touch, but his perfectionist tendencies come with a heavy weight of time to carry out.

The film allows for Gideon's genius to be undeniable and yet exasperating in that working with him brings others to justified tears. By the time his vision is realized, yes, he has managed to sharpen it, but it is branded with his stamp of style, burning every stable relationship he has as fuel to his fire, all with catchy songs and choreo to his fever dream downfall. It is cutting, brilliant, and tragic. Everything is firing at all levels to see this guy's workaholic efforts consume him in his glorified work. It is a metaphor realized and made flesh. I don't know how someone has this vision to tell this honest story and then the ability to make it be accurately depicted and shown.

I don't think I will ever want to watch it again. It is insanely well made in every frame. But it is an enchanting mirror like in the fable of the Ice Queen, where ugliness is amplified and you cannot remove the mote from your eye. Everything works here from the music to the dancing to the performances. It is a staggering work of creative brilliance and the broken bodies and minds it leaves to pick up the wreckage when that flame is snuffed and the music dies away. It is a haunting tale to see myself in the film, knowing the director has managed to convey the agony and ecstacy, the loneliness and insatiability of having the best taste in every room you enter and having to shape the flawed people around you into suitable tools to reach that vision. I can't live this way and yet now that I know it is possible to do something like this? What excuse have I not to give it my best shot to craft a shadowplay of whatever was accomplished in this piece of work?