Departures

Departures (Okuribito, 2008) is a Japanese drama by Yojiro Takita that you can watch online on iFILM. Daigo, a cellist, loses his seat when his Tokyo orchestra folds and moves back to his snowy hometown with his wife. He answers an ad he assumes is for a travel agency. It turns out to be a funeral parlor.

The trade is called nokan: the ritual cleansing and dressing of the dead, performed in front of the grieving family. Daigo hides the job from his wife at first, ashamed. Then his quiet mentor Sasaki shows him the craft, and what looked like dirty work becomes a careful act of farewell. Masahiro Motoki plays Daigo; Tsutomu Yamazaki is the old master who teaches him.

The film took the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, the first ever for Japan. It is gentle and unhurried, and it treats death with more calm than almost anything on the subject. If you love the slow, humane storytelling of Hirokazu Kore-eda, this one lands. Stream Departures (2008) online on iFILM.