Departures and my right-brain

I saw the film Departures last night, which won this year’s Academy Award for Best Foreign Film. It is the story of a newly unemployed cellist who returns to his hometown in need of a job. He takes the job of a Nokanshi, which is a profession to prepare the dead for the coffin (and cremation) – while the grieving family watches – through a ritual of cleansing, meticulously dressing and applying make-up to a corpse. Now, it sounded intriguing. Hey, I liked Six Feet Under and Only the Lonely, which both had their share of preparing the dead. Plus, in winning the Academy Award, the film beat out the stiff competition from The Class (from France) and Waltz with Bashir (from Israel). So, I figured there must be something to it. But, that said, I never expected the effect it actually had on me, which was simply astounding. But before you read more – have you seen the video of Jill Bolte Taylor, a Harvard brain researcher, talk about her own stroke? If not please watch it before reading the rest of this blog. It's great. So, what happened as I watched the film at the beginning was this left-brain commentary in my head: “Gee, this ritual takes a long time. It is sort of weird. The Japanese sure are meticulous. We certainly do death differently. I wonder what is going to happen to make this movie special. It is so slow...” But then, while watching another one of the rituals with cello music providing the soundtrack, the film just captured me and my internal commentary silenced. I went all right-brain, shifting to pure emotion of a surprising profundity. Big tears were streaming down my face for much of the rest of the movie. I felt this almost primal connection to everybody and elephants (because they, too, ritualize their dead). I felt empathy to all who have ever grieved and realized my tears – and the tears of the mourners - were bittersweet. That somehow this ritual was truly creating a feeling of peace and acceptance of death. And, in that way, it was incredibly life-affirming. So, like Jill Bolte Taylor, I must say that silencing the left-brain from time to time is a wonderful experience. And, this film did it for me. Opera does too - but that is a different blog...