About to go away, but catch it when it comes around again...Departures

[Lydia Leftcoast]

I postponed seeing this Japanese film, even though it was in my instant queue (my HUGE instant queue), but then I noticed that it was about to go away.

Wow, it really deserved its Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film.

It's about an unemployed cellist who goes back to his hometown in northern Japan and stumbles onto a job as a noukanshi, someone who prepares bodies for funerals.

At first he's grossed out by the job, especially when the first call he goes out to with his boss is to prepare the body of someone who was found after two weeks. But then he sees the quiet and caring way in which his boss interacts with the families of the deceased, and he gradually gets into performing the traditional rites of washing and dressing the body.

There's a problem. Other people, including his wife, think that his job is creepy...

[Dappleganger]

1. Love, LOVE this movie!!

My husband and I watched it last summer while I waited (and waited) to go into the OR for my gallbladder surgery, LOL. He thought it was a little depressing at first but I thought it had such a powerful message. A very unexpected pleasant surprise.

[elocs]

2. Here it is (no longer available for instant viewing):

Departures
(Okuribito)
2008PG-13 131 minutes

Freshly unemployed, young cellist Daigo (Masahiro Motoki) has an epiphany in which he realizes he's been heading down the wrong career path. Retreating to his hometown, he trains for a new professional role as a nakanshi, or one who prepares the dead for burial. Tsutomu Yamazaki provides comic relief as Daigo's eccentric mentor in director Yojiro Takita's Oscar-winning, richly detailed -- if unlikely -- drama about finding your bliss.

Cast:
Masahiro Motoki, Tsutomu Yamazaki, Ryoko Hirosue, Kazuko Yoshiyuki, Kimiko Yo, Takashi Sasano, Tôru Minegishi, Tetta Sugimoto, Yukiko Tachibana, Tatsuo Yamada
Director:
Yôjirô Takita
Genres:
Foreign, Foreign Dramas, Japan, Japanese Language
Language:
Japanese
This movie is:
Emotional, Sentimental, Understated
Format:
DVD
Average of 197,675 ratings:
4.1 stars

[Lydia Leftcoast]

3. Yes, that's why I watched it--I knew it was going off the list

But on a tangent, I thought of other Best Foreign Language Film winners that I'd seen and loved: Nowhere in Africa, The Lives of Others, Pan's Labyrinth, The Other Side of Sunday, Burnt by the Sun, etc.

I looked up the list of Oscar winners, was surprised at a couple of choices (A Man and A Woman? Did it win just because of the song associated with it?) and saw that I had never heard of some of them.

So when I have more time, I'd like to look up the films I haven't seen and try to find them on Netflix. I'm sure there are a lot of hidden treasures.