Fridae

Departures (or Okuribito in Japanese) stunned many last week when it took home the Oscar for Best Foreign Picture, beating the crowd favourite Waltz with Bashir. Just one day before that, Departures had also dominated the Japan Academy Awards, taking home 10 prizes. Some observers speculate that the film's themes of death and forgiveness resonated with the older voters in both Hollywood and Japan , hence giving it a leg up on the competition.

Directed by Yojiro Takita, this drama (2 hours and 10 minutes) stars Masahiro Motoki as an unsuccessful cellist who returns to his hometown looking for work. A job ad with the heading "with departures", lead him to a funeral home instead of a travelling agency.

The position of an undertaker requires him to perform stylised rituals to ready a corpse for cremation. Although he has never seen - let alone dress - a dead body, he accepts the job because of the high salary, and gradually learns to apply his musician's sense of tempo to the elegant rituals.

Departures is a poignant dramedy, but it's hard to understand how it could have trounced arguably superior contenders in Oscar race, like the French drama The Class and Israel's groundbreaking Waltz with Bashir. The elaborate rituals carried out for the dead are truly beautiful, and the film is best when it is detailing these rituals. Though parts of the film are conventional and melodramatic, it is still worth viewing.