A movie to watch

Posted by Terry McNichols

My husband and I watched a very touching movie the other night, called Departures.  It is a movie in Japanese, with English subtitles.  It won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 2009.  It is a poignant story about a young man who finds his calling as a nakanshi, or one who prepares the dead for burial.   It is a beautiful story of respect for the dying and the process of burial, subtitled "the gift of lasting memories." 


I was perhaps especially moved, having just witnessed the rituals around the burial I described in Monday's post. And how difficult it must be for the people of Haiti to have lost loved ones with no possibility of "the gift of lasting memories."