"Departures" takes a charming emotional journey

This year's surprise Oscar winner for best foreign-language film, Yojiro Takita's "Departures" is the kind of emotional art-house movie (think "Cinema Paradiso" or "Forbidden Games") that will puzzle some audiences and leave others in tears.

The opening scenes are light and sometimes unapologetically slapsticky, but they're hiding a more serious design that becomes increasingly visible as the story progresses. As all the pieces fall into place and the picture passes the two-hour point, its calculations are likely either to move you or leave you dry-eyed.

Another possibility: You'll be torn between the two reactions. "Departures" is such an elegant, beautifully mounted meditation on death, funeral customs and parent-child relations that you may find yourself sniffling and resisting simultaneously.

A prologue, reminiscent of the quirky weekly opening sequences of HBO's "Six Feet Under," deals with an unusual death, a curious revelation and the "encoffination" ceremony of washing, dressing and moving the corpse into a coffin.

It's the first indication that Takita will be dealing not with the musical career of his hero, Daigo (Masahiro Motoki), but with his abrupt shift into another profession. A cellist whose Tokyo orchestra has disbanded because of cutbacks, Daigo returns to his hometown and moves into his late mother's house.

Thinking he's applying for work at a travel agency, he accidentally lands a job preparing the dead for their final encounter with family and friends. He becomes so attached to this new line of work that his wife (Ryoko Hirosue) leaves him. But he feels at home with the job — and a crusty but caring boss (Tsutomu Yamazaki) who replaces the father who abandoned him when he was young.

Suddenly aware that he might not be the most brilliant or competitive of musicians, Daigo finds his calling. Through a series of scenes with mourning families who are sometimes grateful, sometimes spiteful, but always engaged at this turning point in their lives, Takita and his screenwriter, Kundo Koyama, often hit just the right note of comedy or drama.

Yamazaki, so funny in the 1986 noodle-shop comedy, "Tampopo," brings his comic instincts to a tricky role. His relationship with Daigo is the heart of the movie, and Motoki (from "Shall We Dance?") couldn't be more responsive. That the ending works at all is largely due to their teamwork.

John Hartl: johnhartl@yahoo.com