Departures (2008)

  At first blush, this does not seem like it's going to be a fun watch.  

Daigo (Masahiro Motoki) is a concert cellist who has finally gotten a place at a Tokyo orchestra... only to have it fold.  Disconsolate, he and his wife Mika (Ryoko Hirosue), move back to his hometown.  Searching the papers for work, he comes across an ad for "departures".  Thinking it's like a travel agency, he applies, and is hired on the spot.  Then he's told it's actually a typo, and it was supposed to say "the departed".  He has just signed up to be an apprentice Nokanshi, one who prepares bodies for cremation.  In the U.S., the equivalent would probably be a mortician, but the Nokanshi's role is almost like that of a priest, highly ritualized and meant to give comfort to the living.  Initially embarrassed, Daigo soon finds the work to be more rewarding than he had ever imagined.

This film suckers you in by being quite funny, mostly due to Motoki's highly expressive face, and then, when it hits you with the sad cello music, you're completely unprepared. 

Everyone handles death differently.  Most people find their inevitable mortality too overwhelming to think about from day to day.  When it comes, it is often bewildering.  The urge to revile those who work with the dead, to see them as unclean, stems from the fear that one day we too will end up as nothing more than an empty vessel.  But it is a necessary and honorable work, capable of relieving some of the burden of grief by ensuring that the deceased are treated in death as they perhaps would not have been in life, with great dignity and respect. 

This movie won Best Foreign Language Film at the Oscars in 2009, which is probably how it ended up in my Netflix queue.  I probably wouldn't own it, but it's a great film and I encourage everyone to seek it out at least once.