This film is provides an unexpected answer to the question 'what happens in after-life?'. Well, contrary to the well spread beliefs there is no Hell and no Paradise and it is not Saint Peter who expects us but a rather dull team of what look like government clerks working in the rather dull building of a Japanese reception institution. They receive the people, they discuss with them their memories, and ask them to keep one - just one - significant moment in their lives which they will take with them into eternity. All the rest will be forgotten. The rest of the week the fresh dead spend in the institution is dedicated to making an amateur film based on their single memory. They go to the projection room, the lights go off, the films are projected. When the lights are turned back on there is nobody left. We do not know what happened with them. Only the boxes with the films remain to be archived forever.It is the first film of director Hirokazu Koreeda that I see. It is an unusually sensible, smart and simply made movie. The first part is filmed like a documentary, with fixed camera, style professional interviews. The second part uses hand-held camera, looking as the amateur films would have looked like. Actors are wonderful, there are many different characters, but each one is an individual, and that feeling of 'all look the same' that an European viewer has many times with Asian films is not present here at all. 'Wandâfuru raifu' is a film that makes the viewer think about their own lives and their meaning. Few films succeed this so well.

The rather simplistic plot of this film involves a sort of way-station for souls passing on into the afterlife at which they must choose a single memory to take with them. This memory is reproduced on film in true low-budget fashion, then as the film is screened each person disappears into the great beyond as their memory is played. The conflicts arises out of the different ways those passing through choose what memory to take with them and the experiences of the staff.This is probably the most accessible of director Koreeda's films, especially for a Western audience. His low-key directorial style is expertly matched to the tone of the film, which is set in an abandoned school. The sort of running gag throughout the film is the general shabbiness of the proceeding, which stands in stark contrast with what many of us might imagine the hereafter to be like. In one scene, where the staff tries to reproduce a man's memory of flying in an airplane, cotton balls suspended on wires serve as clouds.Overall this is a very poignant, low-key yet satisfying film that is very watchable and a good gateway into the world of Koreeda's films. It lacks the social commentary of other works such as Distance or Nobody Knows, but makes up for it with a touching story and emotional content, and is very accessible even to those with little interest in foreign or Japanese films.

The underlying premise and theme of this film is extremely thought-provoking. Within the first 20 minutes, your brain will light up like a Christmas tree as you think of the implications and how you would react in a similar situation. It has the magical ability to awaken nostalgic memories of your own, and several times I had to pause the film so that I could indulge my own private thoughts for a while. Hats off to the director/writer for achieving the necessary balance between fantasy and realism (i.e., taking you to a surreal place whilst not destroying the human perspective).But the downside... I feel that the director failed to cultivate some of the excellent philosophies which were barely touched upon. This could have been accomplished with more dialogue. Don't get me wrong, there's plenty of *talking* in the movie, but it's mostly anecdotal (people wistfully reminiscing about the past). There wasn't enough analysis and barely any *dialogue* (people communicating with each other).Without ruining anything, I'll give you one example. The premise is, of course, "if you had to pick one memory to relive forever, which would you choose?" One character simply refuses to pick. This is brilliant. As soon as he takes his position, which he does in the first 10 minutes of the film, it woke me up and made me wonder why he would choose this unconventional act of defiance.But much to my disappointment, this central theme is abandoned. The character is hardly seen again. He does deliver an interesting monologue towards the end which is encapsulated in a single powerful statement he says (I won't tell you what it is). But I couldn't help feeling as if the director didn't really follow through with his philosophy.Perhaps that was the intent of the director: to present us only with fragments so that we may ponder the philosophy ourselves. But that approach somewhat betrays the nature of art. Art, I believe, should do its best to communicate a complete idea, and *then* open up the floor for discussion. Anything less is a mere Rorshach test. Or whatever you call those inkblot thingees that psychologists use to probe your mind.As you can probably guess, I'm not a big fan of the Minimalist movement.Another gripe... Some of the interesting philosophical points were shoved aside to make room for the romantic sub-plot, which I found to be a bit forced and unbelievable. I would have preferred to see the director stick to the heavier issues. If this is truly a film about deep spirituality, why dedicate so much time to a teenage girl's crush on a guy?So my overall criticism is that there wasn't enough substance presented. I admit there IS the possibility that the dialogue/philosophy I craved was lost in translation. It is possible that the English subtitles didn't convey the philosophy inherent in the original Japanese. That's been known to happen.But still, I think this film could have truly benefited by a good old fashioned Shakespearian soliloquy, like Hamlet Act III Sc 1, to help clarify the director's message.Well, here I've wasted my whole review babbling about philosophy, and I haven't touched upon the technical merits of this film. Let me just wrap up by reiterating that THIS IS A GOOD FILM despite my criticism. I love the way the director achieved a surreal feeling without using gimmicky, schlocky clichés like pearly gates and angels and pixie dust. Everything about the production is firmly rooted in reality despite the very unrealistic nature, and that achieves a very bizarre and clever paradox. Also there's no music at all. It's an original, I'll definitely give it that! Give it a whirl. I'll probably watch it a 2nd time myself.

I saw After as part of the Hirokazu Kore-eda retrospective at the Melbourne International Film Festival. This film should be compulsory viewing for film students. It proves that a good story put together inventively is all it takes to produce a compelling film. With scarce resources and mostly non-professional actors, Kore-eda has ingeniously contrived an alternate reality, where people go at the time of death. No pearly gates, no angels, no hell-fire - just bureaucrats in government buildings (or so they seemed to this writer), processing the dead, and extracting from them their lives' fondest memories to be made into videos.This idea is almost comical, yet it works beautifully. Clearly there's a humorous element, but Kore-eda plays it matter-of-fact serious, almost like a documentary. For me it strongly recalls some of the early fiction films of Kieslowski (like Camera Buff) which evolved out of the documentary format. The film shares the beautifully raw aesthetics of Camera Buff and Blind Chance and with the latter's metaphysical exploration. Having seen at MIFF all but one of Kore-eda's films (Distance, which I plan to see on Tuesday), this is my favourite so far. But each of the films I have seen thus far are very different in content and style to each other. This film is both enjoyable and moving.