A truly great piece of film making.

Departures is a beautifully acted Japanese movie, which managed to utterly immerse me into the fascinating life of Daigo Kobayashi, a successful cellist, who suddenly finds that his orchestra is to be disbanded.

This life has been a safety net and the regular income vanishes leaving Daigo with no money to pay for the brand new cello he has just bought and is facing big debts. Daigo has to go home and explain this all to his wife Mika.

His confidence in playing or working with another orchestra is all but lost and Daigo decides to sell his instrument and try something else.

From this point the story becomes incredibly touching and poignant…

Sometimes in life, you find yourself working a job you'd never have thought you'd be doing in a million years. For Daigo, this is more true than most. Moving to his hometown for work after his orchestra disbands, the cellist accidentally finds himself applying to be an encoffiner. Whoops.

This is an absolutely marvellous film which survives being completely predictable and unsurprising. It doesn't matter if the plot is mostly unremarkable as the journey is never less than fascinating. You buy his relationship with his lovely (but not perfect) wife and how he comes to be preparing corpses before cremation. There are many scenes of grief and crying here, but it's a comforting watch strangely.

Not in a morbid sense,…

Supported by powerful acting, Departures is a simple movie that is profoundly effective in its emotional impact and views on life, death, family, new beginnings, pride in your job, and finding extraordinary meaning in something you initially detested.

The story is easy to follow and understand without needing to beat you over the head with its message. The characters feel real and believable, and the cast seems so genuine and sincere in their performances. There are or two tinges of drama the film could have benefited without, but it's nothing for me to make a fuss over.

One thing the movie excels at is drawing you in during the first half with subtle, but hilarious humor, and then slowly releasing…

I really did want to love this film. It was the last movie that Roger Ebert featured as a 'Great Movie', and I'm currently studying to become a teacher in Japan next year, so I really want to love as much of Japanese culture as I can. Saying that though, something with me and Departures just didn't click. Most of my favourite films are light on plot and very heavy on people talking, but the way Departures did this just didn't sit right and made me bored for most of the second half of the movie. The slow pace in the first half was leisurely and sweet, but at no point did anything attempt to reach out and grab my…