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Departures

Okuribito (Departures)

2008

Yōjirō Takita

Masahiro Motoki, Tsutomu Yamazaki, Ryoko Hirosue, Kazuko Yoshiyuki ...

7.6

11,491

Drama Daigo Kobayashi is a young married cellist who played in an orchestra that has just been disbanded. Suddenly on the street without a job and no hope for a career, Daigo decides to move back to his hometown with his wife. There he gets a job as a nokanshi, an "encoffiner", an undertaker, the man who ceremoniously washes and dresses the dead bodies and places them in coffins, sending them onto the next world. He is a bureaucrat, a ... [+]

	Author	Review
United States	Maggie Lee The Hollywood Reporter	"[Takita] has made a popular gem -- thematically respectable, technically hard to fault, artfully scripted to entertain and touch."	POS
United States	Eddie Cockrell Variety	"Tonally eccentric, lushly scored meller 'Departures.' Fascinating glimpses into a unique profession trump the pic's emotional manipulation and substantial length"	NEU
United States	Roger Ebert rogerebert.com	"The construction of Takita's screenplay is rock-solid in its fundamentals, and yet such is the film's flow that we don't sense the machinery creaking (…) Rating: ★★★★ (out of 4)"	POS
United States	A. O. Scott The New York Times	"Overlong, predictable in its plotting and utterly banal in its blending of comic whimsy and melodramatic pathos"	NEG
United States	Philip Kennicott The Washington Post	"It is as polished as it is heavy-handed, and it leaves one under a spell. Death is a hard subject to focus on for two hours, and the film never drags."	POS
United States	Keith Phipps AV Club	"Here’s a great way to start savoring life: Don’t waste it on pat manipulations like this."	NEG
United States	Walter Addiego SFGATE	"Performed with delicacy and precision (...) The film is far from perfect but has enough going on to compensate for its excessive length and some sentimentality"	NEU
United Kingdom	Phil de Semlyen Empire	"Heart-warming, funny, wise and profound. Not to be missed (…) Rating: ★★★★★ (out of 5)"	POS
United States	Kenji Fujishima Slant	"It is so predictable. I could sense many of the film’s dramatic revelations a mile away (...) 'Departures' is still just about potent enough to leave us with lingering questions."	NEU
United Kingdom	Xan Brooks The Guardian	"At the start there is some uncertain shuffling, a few inappropriate giggles; the odd spasm of embarrassment. Then the mood settles and the soberness of the ritual takes hold (…) Rating: ★★★ (out of 5)"	POS

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