Okuribito (Yojiro Takita, 2008)

Departures, the winner of the 2008 Foreign Language Oscar, is built on a promising enough proposition: a young man, giving up on his career as a cellist, applies for what he thinks is a travel agency job to find himself thrust into employment as an 'encoffiner' instead, charged with ceremonially preparing the dead for burial. His fiancee, given the traditional stigma attached to handlers of the deceased as the work of the underclass, is mortified at the discovery of his new position.
Takita's film has a choice to make at this point: to go all-out with the gallows humour at the protagonist's awkwardness, which it initially toys with to reasonable effect, or to probe deeper from the social critique angle. It fumbles the ball at this point and smoothes both out by opting for sentimentality instead, which proves its intellectual undoing even as it concomitantly guarantees the product's appeal to the saccharine-seeking Academy Award audience. It's never a good sign when a director attempts to convey soulfulness by having a camera encircle a man passionately playing a cello in the open air. You may recall this as shorthand for Jan-Michael Vincent's emotional depth in the dire '80s gadget action series Airwolf.

5/10