Yomigaeri

This is actually a very nice movie with good actors, a very imaginative plot and some great cinematography. But the extremely melodramatic music made some scenes almost impossible for me to take them serious, although this definitely is a serious movie about love and death. A bit more humor would have helped to increase the overall impression, though.

A genre that seems only to work coming out of Japan. The magical fantasy is better known in the US thru Miyazaki's animations such as "My Neighbor Totoro" or "Sprited Away". The subject is usually ordinary people encountering wondrous happenings that have a deeper spiritual meaning. This film is a live action entry in the genre and it succeeds for the most part. American equivalents are films like "Magnolia" or "Big Fish".

In a small town dead people start to reappear just as they were right before they died minus any disfigurement that may have been a result of the circumstances of their death. A young bureaucrat is sent to investigate. By coincidence he grew up in the town and he meets his childhood friend, a woman who married his best male friend. Several families who have dead loved ones return are featured in the drama.

The actors are almost all very good and they put across the emotional turmoil caused by the reappearance of their loved ones. The movie moves forward in a deliberate yet sometimes non-linear manner. The photography is excellent and very natural. I would have given the movie 9 stars if not for something that ruined the mood for me. For such a well written and sincere film, I wonder who came up with the idea of creating a pop group for the film and centering the climax around a concert. Nothing in the film has anything to do with a concert. As soon as the concert starts the drama film turns into a concert film. One song was passable, two songs is an understandable mistake, three songs ruined it for me. The excuse for having the group in the film is flimsy at best. If you like J-Pop perhaps your opinion will be different, I just wished I could have seen a version of this film without the concert.

Excellent fantasy, heed my warning about the concert but watch it anyway.

Maybe it was the physical situation I was in, strapped into a bucking 'plane, on my way from my loving family to a family reunion, but this made me cry non-stop. I watched this in total darkness, straining to read the subtitles off a tiny in 'plane "entertainment unit". My brother, sitting next to me, without any of the emotional baggage (his "family" is less "loving" than mine!) kept asking me what was the matter! The twists and turns in the storyline should reward the most demanding mystery fan. The power and passion in the love story should satisfy the most romantic. I watched this three times in four flights, and it gave me everything I needed, every time I watched it. Now I've just got to convince a local company to provide me with a DVD!!

The dead were here because they wanted to let the alive know the meaning of their lives. When they went away, everyone found themselves a new way to live on. Yomigaeri just shows these all.

The child lost in the wood, the wife died from pregnancy, the school student who suicided himself......those we missed so much suddenly came in reality. They dug out the emotion that we didn't pay attention to or were ashamed to express, and the feeling was so precious now.

The flame of love between the leading actor and actress finally appeared. If they didn't experience this event, they probably lost each other. Love is of great power, especially in front of death. Although the time to be with each other was short and farewell was at hand, it was enough.

I absolutely LOVED this movie! The stories (and there are several in the film) are not only (dare I say it?) heartwarming, but some have twists I didn't see coming. A story of love and the different meanings of "resurrection", YOMIGAERI strikes me as nothing less than a Japanese Spielberg film--complete with soaring John Williams-like score. There are also a couple of pop songs that are actually relevant to the plot. I'm sure there are those who consider this movie hopelessly sentimental, but it's an honest sentimentality that only the Japanese seem to be able to pull off. (See AFTER LIFE and SHALL WE DANCE?--if you haven't already--to see what I mean.)