Analysis: After Life

Frederick Jameson has written that one symptom of the post-modern is the nostalgia film; people have lost the ability to connect with the past and present and look to film to make those connections for them. A stream of the recently deceased pass through a way station and must look back on their lives and choose one memory to take with them into eternity. When watching Kore-Eda’s film After life, a post-modern reading is not far away. However, reading the film simply in terms of post-modernism does it a disservice. Kore-Eda has layered After life in meta-filmic moments that on one level suggest a post-modern meaning but on another show that film may still have the power to be meaningful.

The film introduces a variety of characters who reminisce over their lives, searching for their one perfect memory. Once the memory is found it is recreated on film. The person then watches the film of their memory and immediately moves on. In this moment, film is made absolutely necessary for people to reach peace and rest. On one level, this necessity can be read as people’s failure to connect with their pasts on their own, they need mediation. It is not truly their memories they are reliving but a simulacrum of life. One of these people, Watanabe, is an old man who cannot choose. He is looking for an evidence of life but is unable to remember anything. He on his own is unable to connect with his past and only through the use of videotapes can he remember it. These meta-filmic moments, the recreation of memories on film and the videos of a person’s life, reveal films use as a connective tool and leave room for a cynical reading of After life: we are trapped in a post-modern moment and the only escape is through false memories and into an eternity of simulacra, there is no hope.

Of course, Kore-Eda refuses to make his film so simple. In fact, he does offer hope. For example, with Watanabe, while it’s true he needs the videos to remember the past, these representations of memories do not actually help him choose. It is through two conversations, one with Iseya who refuses to choose and one with his counselor who was actually his wife’s fiancé before being killed in WWII, that Watanabe is finally able to choose. He is offered the easy solution of a false connection by randomly choosing a memory off of the tapes, but it is through real connections with other people that his choice is actually made. Another moment of Kore-Eda’s denial of post-modernism is through the girl Yoshino. Originally, she wants to choose a memory of Disneyland (the ultimate example of simulacra) but after a conversation with Shiori, one of the counselors, Yoshino changes her choice to a vague memory of her mother’s lap from when she was a little girl. She turns her back on simulacra and chooses something real.

It can still be said that even with the choice of real memory, by recreating it on film a new simulacra is still being made. And the question of why these films are necessary is never really satisfactorily answered within the narrative but by reading them as a comment by Kore-Eda on the nature of filmmaking itself, it is still possible to move past the post-modern reading. The memory films are not giving a false sense of reality, they are actually making moments of perfection from people’s lives livable again, if only briefly. One noticeable aspect of these memory films is their low budgets (a parallel with the reality of independent filmmaking). These low budgets lead to a necessity of creativity and simplicity. As a result, these films do not focus on creating a false sense of reality through fancy tricks but instead focus on creating a glimpse of the truth of reality through a lack of style. It seems that Kore-Eda is disavowing post-modernism and it’s claim that the possibility of negation no longer exists. Instead, there is a claim that film still has the ability to function as art and that the power of negation is still present.

Kore-Eda wants us to feel that what we are watching is real; he wants us to connect with the film in a meaningful way. He uses the meta-filmic moments to allow us to recognize that we are watching a film and to from there make real connections to it. We are not allowed to mindlessly absorb what we are being presented with, the film engages us and is able to succeed in offering an alternative to the belief in post-modernism. As the counselors watch the moon, one comments that it’s shape never changes only the light reflecting off it makes it appear to. After life could be saying the same thing about the meaningfulness of film and the reality of art and life that lies beneath it, it’s not the shape and possibilities that are changing but only our perceptions.

Analysis: Cruel Story of Youth

Oshima argues that it is necessary for a filmmaker to be actively involved in his work; he needs to put himself into his work and make it a part of his external reality. This can only be accomplished through an absence of style, through self-negation. The function of art is to stand outside of culture and offer a criticism and this can only be accomplished through negation. If a filmmaker allows himself to develop a signature style then that style becomes a commodity, it is only by resisting that temptation can a filmmaker create truly radical films. Oshima indicates that he is attempting to achieve this self-negation and by examining the sound design of his film Cruel Story of Youth it is possible to see the tension that he has managed to create between his film and the audience, between art and reality.

Sound is an incredibly important part of film; no matter how good the visual component of a film may be, bad sound will make it seem amateurish. In Oshima’s Cruel Story of Youth it is apparent that the sound was not recorded synchronously and was rather dubbed in. Throughout the film there is very little ambient sound and while the sound effects match the visuals they seem removed, the lack of ambient sound creates a hollowness behind any sound effect. For example, in the scene when Mako is first seduced, Kiyoshi throws her into the water. The only sound in that scene is the dialogue between the two actors and the splashing of water. There are no footsteps, no passing cars or boats, no water other than the splashing, no wind. It is apparent that the sound was not recorded on site but perhaps later, in a studio. The result is that we are made very aware that what we are watching is a film. A tension is created between the desire to lose oneself in the film world and the inability to do so because Oshima is subtly reminding us that what we are watching is not, in fact, reality.

The music of the film is also significant. The diegetic music that plays is almost completely jazz. It characterizes their rebellion against expectations. They are the dissatisfied youth and jazz is their anthem. This choice of jazz is significant because it frequently characterizes attempts at rebellion but fails in the act of negation. Jazz can easily be commodified and when people listen to it or play it they are lulled into a false sense of individuality. They think they are rebelling already so they do nothing to actually rebel. What is it that Oshima is attempting to say about the current youth culture then? If the New Wave film movement in Japan, which this film is supposed to be a part of, is not about what the film stands for but rather what it stands against, as was suggested in class, then what this film is about is the new standing against the old. The presence of Jazz is possibly not there to signify rebellion; it is there to signify the separation of the youth generation from the generation that came before. The one time in the film when a non-jazz piece of music is played diegetically, Kiyoshi says “Bah, Beethoven,” but he then listens to it. He doesn’t actively rebel by changing the radio station, taking the focus away from rebellion, but his comment does bring the focus to difference.