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<title>Space Movie - After Life</title><link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" charset="iso-8859-1" href="space04.css"><link rel="author" title="Reini Urban" href="http://rurban.xarch.at/"></head><body><div id="content"><table width="100%"><tbody><tr><td align="left"><a class="h1" href="index.html"><img src="images/spacemovie.gif" alt="Space Movie" title="Zurück zum Index" border="0" height="33" width="191"></a></td><td rowspan="2" align="right"><a class="h1" href="index.html"><img alt="logo" src="images/space04.gif" style="width: 190px; height: 96px;" valign="top" title="Zurück zum Index" align="right" border="0"></a></td></tr><tr>
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<h3><a name="1">14. August 2006</a><br>
After Life (Jap 1998)</h3>
<p><img style="width: 250px; height: 343px;" class="right"
src="0608/after_life.jpg" alt="After Life" align="right">
<p>"Sie wissen, warum Sie hier sind." - "Ja." - "Sie sind gestern
gestorben." - "Ja." - "Herzliches Beileid." - "Vielen Dank." Sie
verneigt sich leicht und lacht etwas schüchtern.</p>
<p>Ein typischer Kore-eda ("Nobody knows", Personale Viennale 2004).
Klein und fein, eine simple Idee, schnörkellos dramatisiert.
Stell dir deinen schönsten Moment vor, nur
den darfst du behalten. Du darfst ihn sogar verfilmen. Das Filmteam im
Himmel hat allerhand zu tun.
</p>
<p>Im Limbo, am Tor zum Paradies, muss jede Seele eine Erinnerung
wählen, die sie als ewige Identität behalten möchte. Da verbringt
jeweils eine Gruppe kürzlich verstorbener Menschen eine Woche damit,
den entscheidenden Augenblick im eigenen Leben zu
bestimmen. Angeleitet und begleitet werden die Leute unterschiedlichen
Alters dabei von Toten, die es selber noch nicht geschafft haben, ihre
eigene liebste Erinnerung zu wählen. Ziel des individuellen
Nachdenkens ist es, in der zweiten Hälfte einen Kurzfilm zu drehen
über die ausgewählte Szene. Daraus ergibt sich eine wahrhaft
universelle Geschichte, die den mehrdeutigen Charakter des
menschlichen Gedächtnisses untersucht, den Ort, an dem sich Realität
und Fiktion vermischen. Höchstens im Leben selber geschieht das
intensiver als im Kino. Das ist ein Film, der zwischen Erde und Himmel
schwebt.</p>
<p>Kore-eda kommt vom Dokumentarfilm und das merkt man auf Schritt und
Tritt. Viele der Darsteller sind Laien, viele der Erinnerungen (der
Laien wie im übrigen auch der professionellen Schauspieler) sind
"authentisch", sichtlich nicht auf Rührungseffekte hin zurechtgelegt,
ja zum guten Teil: schlicht und einfach banal. Auch die Kamera, die
viel still hält in langen Einstellungen, liebt vor allem Talking
Heads, es ist, hier und auch sonst nicht, fast kein narrativer Luftzug
in diesem Film zu spüren, der die eine Woche, in die er die
allmähliche Verfertigung der ewigen Erinnerung packt, ohne Hast
abschreitet. <a
href="http://www.jump-cut.de/filmkritik-afterlife.html">Mehr...</a> -
Ekkehard Knörer, jump-cut
<p>This film, written and directed by Hirokazu Koreeda, gets an "A"
(in my book) for conceptual creativity. Afterlife (also known as
Wandafuru raifu or "Wonderful Life") truly challenges its audience (as
well as its characters) to ponder deeply the meaning of life and
death. The story is set in what one might call "limbo", although here
this consists of an entire world which looks, feels and is populated
exactly as the real world. The characters, however, are all deceased
and we accompany them through their first seven days of this "limbo"
during which they must decide on only one memory from their life with
which they will spend the rest of eternity. While the many characters
wrestle with isolating a single significant memory from among many, or
from among none, we in the audience will inevitably begin thinking
along these same lines, searching for criteria whereby some past
moments are deemed more valuable than others. Should a "fun" moment be
prioritized above a "serene" moment? Or how about the moment of sexual
ecstacy or the moment of secure love? ...<a
href="http://www.sarudama.com/movies/afterlife.shtml">[sarudama.com]</a>
</p>
<p>When we say we "remember" something, what exactly is it we
recall? A feeling? A smell? Words? Facial expressions? Invited to
relive an especially happy memory, how many of us would be able to go
beyond recalling how we felt, and describe the setting and
circumstances of that moment in precise detail? And even when we
conjure vivid mental pictures of past events, how accurate are they
really?</p>
<p>These and other profound questions are the substance of Hirokazu
Kore-eda's brilliant, humorous, transcendently compassionate film,
"After Life". The Japanese director achieved international recognition
four years ago with "Maborosi", an exquisitely photographed story of a
young woman coming to terms with her husband's unexplained
suicide.</p>
<p>Where that film found the very essence of sadness in the color,
light and shadow of Japanese landscapes and in images of a world
viewed from a distance through a screen of muted grief, "After Life"
is a movie of ideas whose visual surface is deliberately mundane. -
<i>Stephen Holden - New York Times</i></p>
<p><img style="width: 150px; height: 213px;" class="left"
src="0608/t07349ez54x.jpg" alt="After Life" align="left">
Like his previous drama Maborosi (1995), Hirokazu Kore-eda's "After
Life" is a brilliant meditation on death and memory. The premise of
After Life is simple: over the span of a week, twenty-two souls arrive
at a way station (which looks like an old junior high school) between
life and death, where they are asked to choose just one memory to take
into the afterlife. The new arrivals include an elderly woman, a
rebellious dropout, a teenage girl, and a 70-year-old war
veteran. Once they have chosen a memory, it is recreated and filmed by
the staff of the way station, using all the tricks and illusions of
cinema: cotton balls are used to mimic clouds, a fan is used for a
summer breeze. In preparation for this project, Kore-eda interviewed
500 people from all walks of life about their memories. The film
freely cuts between footage of these interviews, actors improvising,
and actors reading scripts. Just as Kore-eda fuses documentary
elements with a fictional narrative, we see over the course of the
film how memories are distorted, improved on, and revised; and it is
these subjectively constructed memories that the new arrivals value
most. This film is not a typical Hollywood feel-good film; but its
unhurried pace and lack of melodrama, like its subject, may linger in
the memory long afterwards. ~ <i>Jonathan Crow, All Movie
Guide</i></p>
<p><b>Festivalpreise:</b><br>
Preise in San Sebastián, Toronto, Buenos Aires, Torino, Nantes,
Mainichi, Bitola (Mazedonien)<br>
</p>
<p class="cast">"Wandafuru Raifu" Jap 1998, B+R: Hirokaze Kore-eda. 118min, jap.meUT<br>
<b>19:30 Uhr, Space04 Kunsthaus Graz, € 5.-</b></p>
Links:
<ul class="links">
<li><a href="http://www.kore-eda.com/w-life/afterlife/">[official site]</li>
<li><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0165078/">[imdb]</a> 7.7/10 (2,083 votes)</li>
<li><a href="http://www.allmovie.com/cg/avg.dll?p=avg&sql=1:173451">[allmovie.com]</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.jump-cut.de/filmkritik-afterlife.html">[jump-cut kritik]</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.rapideyemovies.de/movies/nobody-knows/backgrounds.php">[rapid-eye movies background]</a>
<li><a href="http://www.sarudama.com/movies/afterlife.shtml">[sarudama.com]</a></li>
<li><a href="http://movies2.nytimes.com/gst/movies/movie.html?v_id=173451">[nytimes.com]</a></li>
</ul>
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