Departures: Final

I was solicited for a quote about Departures' success at the Oscars early in the week and didn't realize it ran in an article on the front page of the Yomiuri Shimbun on Tuesday the 24th. It's the last paragraph in the piece (click the image for an enlarged version).

Basically I say that the film depicts rituals that foreign audiences hadn't seen before, in a humanistic and remarkable way (Japanese audiences are just as intrigued -- most don't watch the beautifying process when it involves their own family member). I also mention the lead character's journey of self-discovery as another reason behind the film's victory.

This will be the final post about the movie on here -- there's enough text about Departures on the net to last a lifetime (and then some). See my collected posts here.

Thanks to Bryan Hartzheim for his shuzai. You can read Bryan's well-written reviews of Japanese cinema on Midnight Eye and UCLA's Asia Pacific Arts online magazine, among other places.

Subtitling of Takita Yôjirô's Sanpei The Fisher Boy, which is premiering at the in-progress Yubari International Fantastic Film Festival, and other work will continue to keep the blog fairly quiet for a while yet.