After Life." History, Memory, Trauma and the Transcendent (Kore-Eda Hirokazu's Movie After Life) (Critical Essay‪)‬

(i) Synopsis The recently deceased enter a way-station, a limbo, here pictured as a rather drab institutional-style building, attended by civil servants, who are themselves deceased. The counselors help the newly dead pick a single memory to stay with them always. When the deceased have chosen their memory, it is filmed by the after-life crew, and upon satisfactory completion and viewing of the film, the deceased move on to the next stage, to relive their memory for all eternity. One of the counselors, Mochizuki, upon discovering that one of his clients married the woman to whom he was engaged before his death in the war, decides upon a memory he would like to take with him, and so he, too, moves on. After this batch of the newly dead is properly handled, a new group arrives to be guided to their memory.