Departures (2008 film)

Departures is a 2008 Japanese drama film directed by Yōjirō Takita. It stars Masahiro Motoki, Ryōko Hirosue, and Tsutomu Yamazaki. The film follows a young man who returns to his hometown after a failed career as a cellist. He stumbles across work as a traditional Japanese ritual mortician. In 2009, it became the first Japanese production to winning the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

About Departures (2008 film) in brief

Summary Departures (2008 film)Departures is a 2008 Japanese drama film directed by Yōjirō Takita and starring Masahiro Motoki, Ryōko Hirosue, and Tsutomu Yamazaki. The film follows a young man who returns to his hometown after a failed career as a cellist and stumbles across work as a traditional Japanese ritual mortician. He is subjected to prejudice from those around him, including from his wife, because of strong social taboos against people who deal with death. Eventually he repairs these interpersonal connections through the beauty and dignity of his work. Departures received positive reviews, with aggregator Rotten Tomatoes indicating an 80% approval rating from 108 reviews. It went on to win the Academy Prize for Picture of the Year and become the year’s highest-grossing domestic film. In 2009, it became the first Japanese production to winning the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. The success of Departure led to the establishment of tourist attractions at sites connected to the film and increased interest in encoffining ceremonies, as well as adaptation of the story for various media, including manga and a stage play.. Daigo Kobayashi loses his job as a. cellist when his orchestra is disbanded. He and his wife Mika move from Tokyo to his. hometown in Yamagata, where they live in his childhood home that was left to him when his mother died two years earlier.

He still keeps a stone which is said to convey meaning through its texture—which his father had given him many years before. He feels hatred towards his father and guilt for not taking better care of his mother. He is beset with nausea and later humiliated when strangers on a bus detect an unsavoury scent on him. To clean himself, he visits a public bath which he had frequented as a child. It is owned by Tsuyako Yamashita, the mother of one of Daigo’s former classmates. Daigo is furtive about his duties and hides the true nature of the job from Mika. Mika stops insisting that Daigo change jobs and tells him that she is pregnant. Sometime later, they learn of the death of her father and Daigo experiences renewed feelings of anger and anger at the others at the NK Agent office. During a call for an en coffinment, Daigo prepares both the body in front of the public bath and Mika, who had known the family and had known about the public ritual for years, tells the owner of the bath that she was pregnant. After a few months, Mika returns and announces that she will find a job of which Daigo will be proud. She then avoids him and avoids him until his work, until then, until his family decides to return to her parents’ home in Tokyo. The following month the film opens in Japan, where it goes on to become the highest- Grossing Domestic Film.