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Afterlife Wandafuru raifu (1999) The director of the multi-prizewinning MABOROSHI has created another serious, moving and beautifully crafted film--and again the subject is death. Limbo is an abandoned school and in it the staff prepares the dead for the next step. It is difficult work. The dead must be convinced that they are, and must then be asked to choose a single memory to take with them in passing from this life to the beyond. They are confused, disoriented, and the afterlife is made no easier by all the rules and regulations observed in any official Japanese endeavor. Once the dead have chosen (a moment of park-bench love, a solo flight--one girl chooses Disneyland's Splash Mountain), these moments are reconstructed by the staff and filmed to be taken as the last (and only) memory into the hereafter. But, as Emily found out in the last act of "Our Town," there is a catch to remembering. These consequences are surprisingly and satisfyingly worked out in this slow, grave, lovely film, the experience of which is intensified by the integrity of its large cast: actors and amateurs, all of them making up their own dialogue and consequently "acting" with an intensity not often seen in commercial film. And finally, at the end, like a lotus opening, the film slowly reveals its solid promise. It is not Wilder/Capra; it is Buddhist liturgy.
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