AFTER LIFE | REVIEW & ANALYSIS

Robin Syversen
Jun 20, 2019
6 min read

Updated: Jul 18

Reading Between the Lines of Kore-eda's Vision of Death

Memory recreation crew from the film After Life (1998) by Hirokazu Kore-eda — Image: Senses of Cinema (Click the pic to see the source)

Director: Hirokazu Kore-eda

Cast: Arata Iura, Erika Oda, Susumu Terajima, Takashi Naitô, Takuro Sugie, Ichiro Watanabe

Studio: Engine Film/Sputnik Productions/TV Man Union

Year: 1998

Verdict: 4/6

Welcome to After Life

After Life was the film that skyrocketed Kore-eda to stardom and made him the household name that he is today. Not only did After Life showcase Kore-eda's flair for dialogue and drama to the world, but it also presented a film that went beyond the scope of entertainment.

It is a philosophical thought experiment that we all can relate to. Death is inevitable. When it catches up with us, do we want to recall the fleeting moments of happiness, or was it all an illusion?

It was especially well received in America. «Haunting», «Brilliant,» and «Masterpiece» were only a handful of the superlatives posted by respected papers like The New York Times, The New York Post, and Newsday.

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The Background that Built After Life

Kore-eda chose his cinematographers closely. Yamazaki Yutaka was an award-winning photographer of documentary films, while Sukita Masayoshi made a name for himself when filming the dream sequences in Jim Jarmusch's Mystery Train (1989).

Yutaka shot the narrative segments of After Life on 16 mm film. To distinguish the characters' different memories, however, Masayoshi shot the flashback sequences in various blends of color, black and white, 8 mm, and 16 mm film.

The importance of extenuating each memory stemmed from Kore-eda's own experience with his grandfather's onset of Alzheimer's. The bewildered memories of his grandfather made Kore-eda realize how critical memories are to our identity and understanding of ourselves.

When developing the script for After Life, Kore-eda interviewed more than 500 people and asked which memory they would immortalize. One of the most interesting aspects, Kore-eda recalls, was when people started to elaborate on reality, whether consciously or not.

A Story about Recreating Stories

The story is simple, and the cinematography is equally minimalistic. Most of the film takes place in office spaces, on humble sets, with understated characters in anonymous costumes. It is all about the dialogue and the room it leaves for interpretation.

As it turns out, when humans die, they get to spend one week in a facility where they have to choose one memory to keep in the afterlife. After days of deliberation, a memory is selected and recreated with an in-house film crew.

The point is not to recreate the stories per se, but to capture the feeling the memories represent. This allows the facility to keep costs at a minimum, inasmuch as such concerns matter in purgatory, and demands a certain creativity from the crew.

This particular week, the facility has 22 new visitors to process, during which one crew member of the memory recreation facility noticed something out of the ordinary. It turns out that he used to be engaged to the woman that his current client was married to in life.

The Message of After Life

The film is based on the reflections and dialogues of the 22 clients. During their reflections, one can't help but notice the mundane state of their happiest moments. Is it really so that people were at their happiest when sitting on a bench in autumn, or felt a breeze on their face in summer, or visited Disneyland?

When it comes to a film like this, it is meaningless to question the logic behind it all. It does seem strange, though, that not one of the 22 is in denial, or at least mourns the passing of him or herself.

That being said, it is interesting to imagine purgatory as a sort of psychiatric exercise in which deceased people get time to digest the passing of their own lives. Perhaps the small things in life are the most important?

The client who married the case worker's former fiancée would perhaps never have found such happiness had the case worker not passed away. And yes, the case worker is also deceased. How he came to be employed, somewhere between life and death, is a question for another time, or perhaps a prequel.

Therein lies some of the food for thought. Not only are mundane moments important. Blissful moments are often unexpected and arrive when you least expect them. The case worker certainly didn't expect to find some meaningful point in his former life on this day.

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Purgatory Bureaucracy | After Life Analysis

Getting back to the small things in life, such things arguably occur between the major lines in our lives. The small breaks from career, parenting, and personal demons are when we find peace. In between the lines, we find time for reflection, growth, and recharge.

There is a lot to be read between the lines in After Life. For instance, the use of cherry blossoms was an obvious necessity, being that they are the very symbol of fleeting life and existential reflection in Japanese culture. They bloom brilliantly, then disappear almost immediately, offering a quiet reminder that beauty is inseparable from impermanence.

But it's not just the poetic touches that speak volumes. One of the film's most quietly unsettling choices is its depiction of the space between death and whatever comes next—not as a spiritual plane, but as a low-budget administrative office. In this sort of bureaucratic purgatory, there are deadlines. Forms. Logistics. And staff tasked with processing each case in time for the weekly recording.

This is more than a narrative conceit. It reflects something deeply embedded in Japanese society. The office is a complete bureaucracy, complete with embedded hierarchies, quiet subordination, and the polite inefficiency of institutional life.

In Japan, bureaucracies have long functioned as enforcers of order. Together with politicians and corporations, they form what's often called the Iron Triangle—a power structure that organizes everything from education to urban planning. And, it seems, even the dead are not exempt.

The point is not satire, but something subtler: in a system where hierarchy is internalized from an early age, where decisions often pass through layers of procedure and approval, it makes a kind of cultural sense that even the metaphysical would be processed. Bureaucracy isn't just a structure—it is a worldview. And After Life takes that worldview to its logical, uncanny extension.

Japan's relationship to death also plays into this. Unlike Western narratives that often dramatize the soul's journey, Japanese cultural approaches—rooted in a mix of Buddhism and Shinto—tend to emphasize ritual over finality, and collective continuity over individual transcendence.

There is mourning, but it's quiet. Memory matters, but it's curated. In this light, After Life becomes less about what happens after death, and more about the lingering work of sorting out a life.

There are countless other details and cultural significances to consider, which is a good thing. What happens between the lines is the essence of After Life. Therefore, it will appear different to each viewer, depending on their personal baggage and take on the narrative.

Some might find resonance in the minimalism. Others in the repetition. Or in the happiness of sitting on a bench in autumn. For some, the idea of being remembered might be more comforting than the act of remembering. You might even find happiness in watching slow-churned storytelling in After Life.

Producing an Existential Trip for Afterthought

Watching this film can indeed feel like a meditative exercise. The narrative is brought forth by the dialogues alone. It maintains momentum fairly well, but sometimes the interactions are too tedious to uphold proper focus.

After Life could easily have been cut 10-15 minutes and still kept its profound essence. This is in no way meant as a critique of Kore-eda or the actors, but rather to underline that After Life is more interesting than it is entertaining.

As mentioned above, the film is more of a philosophical experiment than pure entertainment. It is more about the underlying message than what you see, which is slow-paced cinematography, which is borderline mind-numbing at times. It is no wonder that it was well received by critics, since it appears to be a perfect example of arthouse cinema.

Final Verdict | After Life Review

After Life did, of course, deserve all its accolades, but it's not a particularly easy film to approach. Still, for fans of Japanese cinema, it is mandatory. If not for its content alone, then at least for its place in Japanese film history.

Whether it is deemed a classic or an excruciating exercise in pretentiousness is besides the point. After Life quickly gained the status of a modern classic, a feat that rarely happens so soon after a film's release date. Check it out with some precaution. It can be a surprisingly profound experience for the open-minded.