Academy Award® Winner: Best Foreign Language Film
"Director Yojiro Takita and his casting director, Takefumi Yoshikawa, have surpassed themselves. In a film with four principal roles, they've found actors whose faces, so very human, embody what Departures wants to say about them... The music is lush and sentimental in a subdued way, the cinematography is perfectly framed and evocative, and the movie is uncommonly absorbing. There is a scene of discovery toward the end with tremendous emotional impact. You can't say it wasn't prepared for, but it comes as a devastating surprise, a poetic resolution."
- Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times
"It's a deeply touching movie exploring an incredible range of emotions. Unforgettable."
- Jeffrey Lyons, Reel Talk
"A gorgeous drama...beautiful moments abound."
- Joe Morgenstern, Wall Street Journal
"I regard Departures as the most moving film I have ever seen commemorating the bonds between the living and the dead."
- Andrew Sarris, New York Observer
"Enormously affecting, even haunting film with a superb lead performance by Masahiro Motoki."
- Bilge Ebiri, New York Magazine
"When you see the poetic, funny and life-affirming film, you'll have to say that this time the Academy got it right."
- Roger Moore, Orlando Sentinel
"A gentle film...warmhearted...(made with ) beauty and precision."
- Betsy Sharkey, Los Angeles Times
"An incredibly fulfilling movie experience...In a season devoted to movies that go crash-bang-boom, this film offers quiet joy, beauty -- and an amazing array of feelings."
- Marshall Fine, Hollywood and Fine
"This powerfully moving exploration of love and loss is leavened by humor and the revelatory grace of the ritual itself."
- Karen Durbin, Elle Magazine
"It will resonate with anyone who has ever buried a loved one and struggled to reconcile the myriad emotions—grief, anger, helplessness. Which is to say, everyone."
- David Edelstein, New York Magazine
"A beautiful film."
- Angela Walker, Christian Cinema
"Picturesque and graceful with touches of gentle comedy, awash in lovely images and a gorgeous music score by Joe Hisaishi, with one poetic sequence following another... Filled with expressive, contemplative scenes and performances that are quietly powerful, Departures is a sensitive, bittersweet masterpiece that earns its tears honestly."
- Richard Knight, Jr., Windy City Times
"This is truly masterful and glorious filmmaking that's guaranteed a spot in my Top 10 of the year. "
- Edward Douglas, ComingSoon.net
"Departures turns out to be a delightful surprise, at once an engaging dramedy and an eloquent social statement. "
- Bob Mondello, NPR
"This film is absolutely amazing..so well made it transcends the limits and strictures of language and its native culture. This film speaks to its viewers in the gentle and loving respect it shows its characters and through them, its viewers. How long has it been since you had the opportunity to be cherished by a motion picture? "
- Ted Ott, Valley Scene Magazine
"Fantastic performances...a wonderfully humanistic story."
- Luke Crisell, Nylon
"Every so often, a film comes along that is the whole package—that accomplishes everything that transforms a movie into a true work of art. Departures, winner of the Academy Award® for Best Foreign Language film, is such a film. It is a beautiful film at each level—visual, aural, emotional, spiritual, plot. As a whole, Departures stands as a sterling example of what film can be."
- Darrell Manson, Hollywood Jesus
"A Japanese work of cinematic art that is as delicate in subject matter as it is majestic through detail.... shines golden with heartwarming scenes and outstanding acting performances.."
- Candice Winters, Campus Circle
"A gentle, transfixing film experience that takes itself on storywise as an elegy for the dead but in some miraculous way, reaching to higher a epiphany, makes you reexamine the spiritual connections in your own life."
- Sean Chavel, Cinecon
"Easily the best movie I've seen thus far this year...beautifully done."
-Rev. Chris Carpenter, Movie Dearest
"An exquisite cinematic masterpiece that is both funny and sad and all the emotions in between; it touches the heart with its treatment of beauty, music, death, and abandonment."
-Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat, Spirituality and Practice
"The film takes an unusual and unique subject, but it is handled with grace and humor. It is a brilliant piece of art, and I have a great admiration to the director Yojiro Takita, for putting this film together"
- Mark Rydell, President of the Jury / Montreal World Film Festival
Winner 10 Japan Academy Prize Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor
Winner - Grand Prix de Ameriques: 32nd Montreal World Film Festival <>
Winner - Mercedes Benz Audience Award: Best Feature, Palm Springs International FF
Winner - Golden Rooster Award: Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actor (Masahiro Motoki) <>
Winner - Hawaii International Film festival: Audience Award
Winner - Hochi Film Awards: Best Film <>
Winner - Nikkan Sports Film Award: Best Film, Best Director
Winner - Kinema Junpo Awards: Best Film, Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Actor (Masahiro Motoki)
The Movie
... in my opinion: a very beautiful, delicate, moving movie... an insight view of Japan's great culture and feeling and sensitivity without having to fly there!
There are lots of referring to music and vinyl and analog turntables and classic cello discs... and Death is managed as death... a life fact... lots of Compassion and respect for people in Shintoist ceremonies.
A truly simple, deep, easy and difficult movie, which brings you to consider several matters from a different perspective...
Highly recommended to everyone.
I loved it.
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