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Departures

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Tue 2 February 2010 // 19:00
Wed 3 February 2010 // 19:00
Thu 4 February 2010 // 19:00

(Tue 2nd to Thu 4th / 7pm / £4/3/2 TTT)
(Double bill with 'In A Dream' £6/3 TTT)
(Yôjirô Takita / Japan / 130 minutes / 2008 / subtitles)

Please note the correct start time for departures on Tues 2nd is 7pm, not 8pm as stated in the printed programme).

This was the quiet academy award winning for the Oscar's best foreign language film 2009...a tale of an in between orchestras professional cellist Daigo Kobayashi (Masahiro Motoki) who moves out of Tokyo to his home town with wife Ikue and takes a job preparing dead bodies for burial in the traditional Japanese style of Nokanshi. At first with contemporary sensibilities but his later pride in the job and sense of ritual raises questions about the face of death in our present day lives.

Director Takita has made a clear-headed evocation elements of death that permeate everyday existence, and our contemporary fear of the subject set against the traditional world of ritual in Japan. Daigo, his wife Ikue and the other characters struggle to cope with the profound spectre of sudden, profound emotional loss, which powerfully shapes their daily lives.