A curiously engaging film...

Before we left Pagosa, Galina and I were browsing the selection at Netflix and were "offered" a Japanese film to view called Departures. I checked the capsule summary and found out it was about a young man who, after losing his job as a cellist with a minor orchestra, moves back to his home town with his wife and ends up working as an "encoffiner," or one who prepares the bodies of the deceased before they are placed in a coffin.

I have to admit, the summary absolutely did not draw me in, but Galina suggested we could always stop watching if we didn't like the way things were developing after a few minutes, so I went ahead and clicked 'Play'.

I was very pleasantly surprised by the movie.

Last night, I watched it again, with Natalie, and it was just as good, if not better.

I guess the thing that really attracted me was the fact that I found all of the leading characters to be likeable, and I could sympathize with their respective points of view. The story, being Japanese, also avoids the usual wrinkles one finds in our native tales of mentors dealing with mentees (here, I am reminded of the sempai/kohai relationship in Michael Crichton's Rising Sun, but on second thought, that doesn't seem applicable to the story in Departures.)

* * *A lot of running around today, including a run past Fry's (two, in fact, when it became apparent that my recently acquired 1.5-TB drive has problems) and Central Market.

One day and a wakeup until it's time to leave for the airport.

Cheers...