OKURIBITO

Daigo is a cello player of great dedication but middling talent, a member of a Tokyo orchestra playing to half-filled houses while he dreams big classical dreams. When the orchestra falls on hard times and Daigo finds himself out of a job, his dreams are the first thing to go. Stripped of everything, including his dignity, he finally begins the journey back home with his wife, Mika, returning to the house he grew up in. The memory of his mother is there, but more powerful still is the specter of the father who left when he was a boy. Soon Daigo is answering an ad for a company that specializes in \"departures\". But what he envisioned as a travel agency turns out to be a company that deals with departures of a very different sort. Death is the business here, with funeral director Sasaki in charge of the details.
Okuribito is a gentle film about a quiet man in conflict with his world, his father, himself. It is also about death and its rituals. Yet the film manages to be anything but dark; whimsy and sweet irony are laced throughout, a warmhearted blend that turned it into the surprise winner of 2008’s Oscar for foreign-language film. (Betsy Sharkey)