1. Franqie Chan Jia Yi
2014050035
Film & TV Group 1
Assignment 4 02/03/2015
Departure
Directed by : Yojiro Takita
Written by : Kundo Koyama
This movie is about a man name Daigo Kobayashi, he lost his job as a cellist in an orchestra as it
disbanded. He and his wife (Mika) decided to move back to his hometown – Yamagata, his
childhood home together with his mom. His mom pasted away two years earlier. There is a small
coffee shop ran by his father nearby. Nonetheless, his father left the family and run away with a
waitress when he was only six. After that, they lost contact. Although he hates his father, but he
still keeps the stone his father gave him and said that it is a letter-stone.
He found a job via an advertisement saying that is “assisting departures”. At first, he assumes
that the job is a travel agency. However, he knows it is to prepare bodies for cremation in a
ceremony (encoffinment), after he interviewed at the NK Agent Office. Eventhough he still
haven’t decide yet, the boss hired him and pay him in advance. Daigo decided to hide the nature
of the job from Mika.
His first task is to clean up for a woman that died for two weeks. He feels so disgusting and
almost vomit. After that, he boarded a bus to go home. When he is in the bus, his body has a
stinky smell, and the passengers realize that the smell came from his body then he decided to go
to bath room (operted by his former classmate's mother) to have a bath before go home.
After some times, he get used to the job, he doesn't want to quit even when his wife found out
through the dvd of him acting as corpse. Mika then go back to her parents house at Tokyo
leaving him alone here. Even his former classmate also avoids him and wnat his family to do so.
After few months, his wife come back and announce that she is pregnant. She hopes that Daigo
can find a new job that can make his child proud. When they are arguing, he receives a call about
his former classmate's mother died. Daigo do his job in front of his former classmate and Mika.
After that, they respect him and Mika stop forcing him to quit.
2. Later, they receive Daigo's father death. Daigo refuses to go at first but after arguing with the
secretary of NK Agent, he goes. The local funeral workers are very careless and he become
offence and want to dress up his father by himself. When he is dressing up, he found the letter-
stone on his father's hand, he hold it tightly. All his childhood memory start to play in his mind.
After he finish the veremony, he pushes the letter-stone to Mika's pregnant belly gently.
First, I write down the story because I feels that the story is very interesting. At the beginning of
the story, it started with comedy, but there is a twist in the end that touched audiences heart. The
inspiration I get is to respect others jobs. Not everyone has the courage to do some rare job, such
as make-up artist for dead bodies, or like the actor of this movie as a encoffin. Most of the people
thought that this kind of job is very dirty and not popular also cannot make themselves proud.
Nonetheless, they are wrong. This kind of job should get the highest respect from all of us. This
is because every job has their reason, has their goal. When you think about it deeper, if there is
no such a job like this movie, who gonna take care of the death body? us? yourself? I don't think
that we have such courage. However, nowadays, cultural lost. Most of the races not following
the original cultural of their races. They do it simply just because they are "busy". The sad thing
is, day by day, the tradition is getting forgotten. The new generation doesn't even know about the
tradition.
This movie is also about the relationship. The main actor, he has a father that left him when he
was six. Actually every parents do every single thing will have their own reason that others can't
understand. Of course there are some no. They always don't want their children to worry. This
movie let me think of my parents, my father passed away when I was seven, my mother decided
to move back to hometown, I was wondering the reason she came back, but now, I understand as
I am growing up. The relationship between family is also very important. Every parents love
their child, just in different ways. Your parent left you, but you don't abandon your parents. They
don't have much time.
In this movie, he hates his father but in the end he feels so struggle when he heard his father died.
Family are very important to a child. Their best memory start from a family, if they get bad
memory they will have the feeling of hatred toward them. Every single minute, we should
cherrish our family.
There are some scenes showed in this movie such as, the octopus scene, the actor thought it was
alive but when they throw it into the river it actually died, second is the scene where salmon fish
swimming for life as their life going to end no matter what. This show that the relationship of life
and death, when there is a death, there is a new life. There is a new hope.
Another lesson i learn is life challenge make people grow. In this movie, his challenge is to do a
job that others can't do but he still able to make it. Through this, he learns about dead people, and
3. he knows the precious memory about family, that's why he came back to his father at the end of
the story.
This is a great movie among the movie I watched before. Not only one lesson you get but more
than that include the way to become a human being.
Storyline Source : Wikipedia, and from my view.
