After Life
⚠️ warning: serious review⚠️
After life: discovering meaning in oblivion
If you were given the choice to choose one memory to keep for eternity could you decide that? Would you be able to decide on one singular moment that encapsulates your entire life? Do you find comfort in the oblivion of uncertainty? Paradoxically, does your entire life have meaning, or is one single moment everything you are, everything your life built up to.
The approach after life takes to well, the after life, is a very drab setting, its more or less a waiting room, the grandeur and spectacle is removed from death, its not shown as something terrifying, its shown as something natural, an office, something you would see every day. Death is an important part of the film but it doesn't exist as something to be afraid of, instead it leads to quiet reflection. In the oblivion of death you arent there for punishment or atonement, just simply calm reflection.
Memories are, for lack of a better word, inconsistent, what you may remember as fact can be false or a fabrication of the truth, this is reflected through the premise of recreating your memories as you remember them not as they were, the after life staff recreates what you remember into a short film, making that memory uniquely yours despite the artificial nature of the short films that are created. Memory comes not from truth but emotional resonance, its the feelings and emotions of that memory that matter not the accuracy, its not memory that survives along with you, but interpretation.
After life refuses the convention of a happiest moment, instead of making that moment be something grand like a big achievement in life, its the small moments, the little fragments of lifes everyday mundanity that are chosen, it inadvertently says that whether or not you did something with your life, if you didnt amount to anything, those little moments are what made you, you. The value of life is not a measure of what you achieved, but instead what you were, how you lived day to day, the small happiness found in everyday life.
But what if you cant choose, what if you believe that there was no moment that encapsulates you as a person? Well thats who the after life staff are, those that couldn't choose. Oblivion is not what we fear, its insignificance, the inability to choose that memory reveals a life unable to be claimed by ones self.
A core idea of after life is that film exists to counter oblivion, it captures the moments that would otherwise be lost or forgotten, forever giving them life through your screen, those moments exist because theres someone to remember them. This idea acts as the viewer allowing these characters to exist in this world, allowing them to be remembered, to grieve, to suffer, to be happy, to reminisce, to live.
Oblivion is inevitable, but meaning is a choice. Your lifes meaning is not something that is guaranteed to you, its something that you have to choose, it says that your life doesn't inherently have meaning until you can see it, by seeing the meaning in yourself you give birth to that meaning, allowing you to live and remember. Life is fleeting, but the meaning lasts forever.