Are You Afraid of Death......

           The movies watched this week was “Departures”, a Japanese movie and “Grace Is Gone” an American movie. Both movies centered on the theme of death, which to me is scary to even think about people I know will pass away one day. Also, both movies incorporated the five stages of grief in very different ways.

            “Departures” is a 2008 movie. Like I’ve mentioned above, both this movie and “Grace is Gone” talked about death. However, unlike “Grace is Gone” that portrayed more directly on how people faced death, “Departures” use a more serene and artistic ways to portray how people faced death.

            In “Departures”, Daigo, the male lead, was a cellist that lost his job and decided to move back to his hometown with his wife. There he accidentally got a new job: preparing the dead. On the other hand, “Grace Is Gone” is about how a husband faced the death of his wife and struggled to tell his daughters. The different of incorporation of five stages of grief is that starting in the movie “Grace Is Gone”, we can see the denial and anger when the husband, Stanley knew about his wife’s death. He refused to let the army officers that arrived with the bad news come into his house, and he sat on the couch for hours until his daughters came back. Also, he kept calling back to the answering machine just to listen to his wife’s voice again. He also suffered with bargaining and depression when he tried to bring his daughters for a trip. Whenever he was alone during the trip, he was seen fell into the state of depression. For example after he asked his brother to bring his daughters for a meal, the scene showed that he walked wobbly to a room where he lied down and cried. Only when he began to slowly accept the death, he told his daughters about the news and comforted them. This scene, in my opinion, also showed the initial stages of grief on the elder sister’s character as when she learned about the news, she was so sad (with denial as she kept saying that the mother was only hurt and they can fix her) and angrily pushed away his father when he tried to comfort her. This movie was more of using direct approach to face the death.

            In “Departures”, the five stages of grief were showed in different scenes. When Daigo first started the job of preparing the dead, he felt very disgusting and ashamed as the movie showed that he straight away went to a bathhouse, washed himself repeatedly after his first case (also because that his first case was extremely disgusting). He didn’t even tell his wife and friends about his job as he was too ashamed. As the story proceeded, he slowly began to gain respect to the job as it expressed gratitude towards the death. The stages of grief were shown in the several scenes of funeral that Daigo prepared the dead. For example there was a scene where after Daigo finish the ceremony, the mother of the deceased got angry with the makeup, saying that it was not her daughter; while the father was angry with the mother not taking care enough of the child. There was also some scene where the family was sort of “happy” during the funeral. For example there was one scene where the granddaughters asked Daigo to out on trendy socks to their grandmother; there was one where the family’s women gathered to leave kissing mark on the deceased. These scenes showed that they had reached acceptance stage.

            This movie also showed some prejudice and discrimination towards people’s occupation. For example, Daigo’s friend was ashamed of his friend’s job and asked him to get a proper job. His wife even said that it was a dirty job and left him. However Daigo still stick to the job as he saw beyond the job, but as a person that helped people to look good on their last journey on earth.

            Out of these two movies, “Departures” touched my heart the most. I cried almost 70% throughout the movie. It stepped on the area that I don’t dare to imagine about. It also showed that how life sometimes can be so fragile. Everyone will face death sooner or later. It is not as scary as we thought it would be. Like a character in “Departures” mentioned, death is not the end but the gate to the next stage. Cherish those you loved; love them until you have no regrets that you did not love them enough.