"Kono hoshi no musuu no chiri no hitotsu dato....ima no boku niwa rikai dekinai."
(I was told that I am just one of the countless specks of dust in this planet...but that is something that I cannot yet understand. -Uninstall, Bokurano)
So, this blog is back to activity again after two-month hiatus. This time, I will try to do something different at the start of every months, which is to review a group of movies that shares the same thematic issue. In other words, I will pick a theme for each month and review about five to seven movies that revolve around that theme. This month's theme is death/mortality, and I had picked five movies that examined the issue from various perspectives (actually, this feature was intended to be written on December because the 'end of year' aspect fits well with the theme, but I was being a lazy procrastinator. Just pretend that you read this in December if you want).
When most of us go to watch movies, we usually do it for recreational purpose or escapism. We want to see something uplifting, preferably with a happy ending. Something that do not remind us of the darker parts in life. Therefore, making movies about death must seems like a bad idea; what kind of people want to see something that remind them their life will end or that they will lose people they love someday? However, in my humble opinion, the greatest kind of movies are those that can tackle hard issues like that and managed to provide enlightenment to the audience. The concept of death in general has to be accepted and embraced, instead of feared. Thus, the best movies about death are the ones that presented death not as a scary and gloomy thing, but as an absolute fact of life that we can learn and even take motivation from.
After I did my research for this feature, I noticed that Japan contributed a very remarkable amount of works related to this particular theme; not just in cinema, but also in various other story-telling mediums. The Japanese society puts heavy emphasis on the matters of life, death, spirituality, and existentialism in general, a very interesting fact that I am eager to revisit in the forms of essay or research in the future once I increased my knowledge about the country's cultural roots and history.
As for this feature, I could have easily find ten great Japanese movies about death and make this an all-Japanese list, but for the sake of diversity I chose only to included two of them (three, if you counted the German movie Cherry Blossoms, which takes place in Japan and strongly influenced by the country's cultural aspects). The movies that I regrettably will not review are Yasujiro Ozu's classic masterpiece Tokyo Story, Kinji Fukasaku's hyper-violent educational satire Battle Royale, and Studio Ghibli's war animation Grave of The Fireflies (NOT because they are not better than the five movies that I chose to review, but because I don't have enough thoughts yet in order to be able to write a capable analysis of them).
The first movie in this feature will be Departures, a 2008 Japanese film that won an Academy Award for Best Foreign Films.
When most of us go to watch movies, we usually do it for recreational purpose or escapism. We want to see something uplifting, preferably with a happy ending. Something that do not remind us of the darker parts in life. Therefore, making movies about death must seems like a bad idea; what kind of people want to see something that remind them their life will end or that they will lose people they love someday? However, in my humble opinion, the greatest kind of movies are those that can tackle hard issues like that and managed to provide enlightenment to the audience. The concept of death in general has to be accepted and embraced, instead of feared. Thus, the best movies about death are the ones that presented death not as a scary and gloomy thing, but as an absolute fact of life that we can learn and even take motivation from.
After I did my research for this feature, I noticed that Japan contributed a very remarkable amount of works related to this particular theme; not just in cinema, but also in various other story-telling mediums. The Japanese society puts heavy emphasis on the matters of life, death, spirituality, and existentialism in general, a very interesting fact that I am eager to revisit in the forms of essay or research in the future once I increased my knowledge about the country's cultural roots and history.
As for this feature, I could have easily find ten great Japanese movies about death and make this an all-Japanese list, but for the sake of diversity I chose only to included two of them (three, if you counted the German movie Cherry Blossoms, which takes place in Japan and strongly influenced by the country's cultural aspects). The movies that I regrettably will not review are Yasujiro Ozu's classic masterpiece Tokyo Story, Kinji Fukasaku's hyper-violent educational satire Battle Royale, and Studio Ghibli's war animation Grave of The Fireflies (NOT because they are not better than the five movies that I chose to review, but because I don't have enough thoughts yet in order to be able to write a capable analysis of them).
The first movie in this feature will be Departures, a 2008 Japanese film that won an Academy Award for Best Foreign Films.
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