After Life

Hirokazu Kore-eda’s After Life opens as if it were a memory already half-forgotten. A group of souls arrives in a modest building suspended between earth and heaven. Each person is asked to choose only a single memory to carry into eternity. All other memories will vanish completely. The workers who guide them will listen, help them remember, and then recreate the chosen moment on film so it can be watched one last time before they depart. The idea feels simple, yet After Life moves with the grace, where every story begins in ordinary detail, then blooms into something eternal. Kore-eda builds a world that feels both documentary and dream. The camera lingers on faces that hesitate before words, people who search for meaning inside their own histories. Some struggle to remember anything at all. Others overflow with stories that have waited a lifetime to be told. There is a stillness in these conversations, as if each person were discovering the shape of their soul for the first time. The film’s power lies in how it portrays memory as something living. Each recollection becomes a field of shifting light, a delicate truth held together by emotion. No memory is complete. Time erodes detail and substitutes imagination where experience once stood. Yet that imperfection makes the memory real. The gaps within it allow meaning and interpretation to enter. Each person shapes their past according to the emotions that define them. A moment of laughter might become a symbol of love. A gesture might become a statement of devotion. When one chooses a memory, one is really choosing the story that gives their life coherence. Kore-eda also understands that memory is not just recollection but a feeling. A scent, a sound, a physical sensation, the texture of air in a certain hour. The body remembers what the mind cannot and a life becomes a mosaic of these shining sensations. The film captures that sensation with muted wonder, as if each memory were a small candle lit against the vastness of time. Nostalgia flows gently through the film like air through an open window. Many choose memories from childhood, when sensations were vivid and unguarded. The film captures this sensory beauty with remarkable care. The world of After Life feels tactile. One can almost smell the dust in the air, the paper of old photographs, the gentle rustle of wind through curtains. These sensations become the evidence of existence itself. Through these recollections, the film asks what it means to live well. The most profound memories often appear small, yet they contain the essence of human experience. A man remembers a prostitute making him porridge when he was sick. A woman recalls her brother buying her a dress, then rewarding her dance with ice cream. These gestures carry tenderness and speak of care, of love expressed through attention. Watanabe, who believes his life was empty, chooses to remember sitting beside his wife on a park bench, speaking softly about nothing at all. In that memory he finds completion. What once felt ordinary becomes eternal. Kore-eda transforms the mundane into the sacred, suggesting that meaning does not depend on greatness but on presence. To live is to notice. To live is to feel. Mochizuki, one of the workers who helps others find their memories, undergoes his own awakening. Through years of listening and recreating the joys of strangers, he discovers that his life has been quietly filled with purpose. His compassion has shaped countless departures, even if those he guided never remembered him. His work itself becomes his memory of joy. The camera lingers on his face, calm and fulfilled, as if he too has remembered and realized something precious. After Life ends in stillness. Shiori, another worker, faces the camera. The empty chair before her waits. The framing suggests that we have entered the room. Her words, gentle and sincere, reach us directly. Which memory would we choose? After I watched the film, I kept thinking of my own. I would return to my kindergarten days in Taiwan. I would be at Dante Coffee, sitting with my parents. I can taste the beef appetizer I loved so much, the sweetness of tiramisu and black forest cake. I hear our laughter in the midst of the quiet jazz in the background and feel the warmth of my mom’s hands. The world feels whole. I am completely alive. That memory carries everything I believe in. Love, belonging, wonder, and the quiet gratitude of being. It is not extraordinary, yet it defines my childhood. After Life reminds me that the essence of living rests in the small details that hold love within them and not in grand victories or moments of perfection. To remember is to live again. To choose a memory is to recognize the beauty that once was, and still is, within us. 90 Story & Pacing: 15/20 Characters & Acting: 17/20 Themes: 48/50 Cinematography & Editing: 5/5 Soundtrack & Sound: 4/5 Memorability: 1/1