Departure

"Departure" is a Japanese movie about a former cello musician force to change his cello career to a career that preparing the dead for funerals because of the disbanded of his orchestra. The director of this movie is quite an humorous and emotional people because of the ways he used to film this movie. For most of the people around the world, especially Asian, always have the prejudice of career that preparing the dead for funerals. Most of the people might think that it is not a pleasure career, not a clean career, or even a scary career too. But the director, used an unique way to introduce this career and somehow break the prejudice that the audiences might have. 

The starting of this movie, the director of the movie wants to give an understanding of encoffinment's job to the audience, he used Daigo, the male leading actor, explained the encoffinment's job is to prepare the deceased for a peaceful departure and showed no differences of attitude towards culture nor gender while he is preparing a transgender deceased for a peaceful departure. While preparing the procedure, each step is so careful, considerate and calm. From that scene, audience can somehow get a little bit of understanding of this movie. 

Although the word "departure" means leaving a place and start a journey, different situation can have different meaning. For example, for ordinary people, "departure" means travel to another country or places. But for those dead ones, "departure" means to start another journey after death. In another word, leave this world peacefully. From here, different people have different perspectives, and this is also how Daito got into this encoffinment job while watching the word "departure" on the news while finding his job, thinking that it might be an travel agency. The director also used a humor way in this scene showing that there was a misprint word from "departed" to "departure" in the advertisement newspaper. Everything started with an misunderstanding word, but somehow seems like is a fate for Daito. 

Daito's boss, is quite an intelligent and patience person. He thought of using job advertisement in newspaper to recruit workers. Plus, he also used broadcasting media to shoot the procedure of casketing, to bring knowledge of this career to the public so that they will not misunderstand or have prejudice about it. 

In the middle of the movie, although Daito cannot get used himself to the job in the beginning, but after watching few cases of his boss doing the procedure and his first case on putting up make up on the deceased, his attitude change. Moreover, after receiving the gratitude from the deceased's family, he was moved and his feeling started to change slowly. The director showed a few scene of different deceased case in the movie, and from it got deceased from different ages, gender and even religion. It is quite fascinating to see such funeral culture in Japan, and also the emotions of different family too depends on the age of the deceased. 

When Daito accept the encoffinment job in the beginning, he deceived his wife from it because he afraid that she will not agree of his job. However, when his wife found it through the broadcasting program, she was quite shocked and cannot accept it. She has the usual perspective that most people have, which is encoffinment is a dirty and ashamed job who touch the corpse, because of the lack of knowledge of them on the job. Although Daito's wife persuade him to quit his job, but Daito refused to because he know the real meaning of the job, which is to help the deceased family by preparing the deceased to have a peaceful journey.  

Fortunately, Daito's wife get to understand him while watching him preparing the deceased, which is the bathhouse's owner. The way Daito's work and out make up to the deceased, made her change her mind and realized that this is not a dirty job, but a beautiful job. A job that not only prepare the deceased to a peaceful journey, but also to comfort the families too who are left behind. The most dramatic part is that when the deceased is Daito's father. Daito hated his father because he left him when he was young. But when the part that Daito preparing the casketing procedure on his father, there showed some sadness, touching and somehow happy ending to his family because he forgives his father's wrongdoing. 

After watching this whole movie, I, who had zero knowledge about encoffinment, coming to know more about this job, and somehow respect those people who are in this career field. It is a respectful and great job, because not many person will willing to do a job that requires to touch dead people or even putting make up on them. It also requires braveness, patience, calmness and respectfulness too. Moreover, this movie is a great movie because it combines humor and love inside. To be honestly, I actually spread some tears while watching him prepare the deceased and his father to make them more prettier on their last day on earth before they leave.

Actually on the screening day, Dr. Goh showed us two movies, which is "Departure" and "Grace is Gone". In "Departure", focus more on a job that prepare the deceased for a peaceful journey as a way to pay respect to the deceased and comfort the family that being left behind. In "Grace is Gone", focus on a guy who lose his beloved one suddenly and the way he cope it. Two different stories but somehow share a similar element, which is grief. 

While watching these two movies, especially watching "Grace is Gone", I keep on thinking of the sad incident which happened recently, which is the missing of MH 370 flight. The sudden missing of the flight and continuos rumors made so many people worried, and even the passengers' family member, feel helplessness and can only wait for news. The feeling they have, the grief they have are hard to cope and it was tremendously sad because it just happened so sudden. However, I did not choose to write it because "Departure" actually made me more impressive and memorable. This most probably is the best movie that I had ever seen until now. 

When a Man Loves a Woman

"When a Man Loves a Woman" is a movie about a pilot and his alcoholic wife and how they overcome the problems that they faced in their family, especially his wife's alcoholic problems get serious.

Alice, the alcoholic wife, was a serious alcoholism, she always drink alcohol no matter in day time or night time. She cannot control her desire to drink alcohol too. She also mentioned in the movie that if she do not drink, she cannot do anything. Here showed that she already depends on alcohol. In DSM IV-TR, one of the criteria for substance abuse is recurrent substance use resulting in a failure to fulfill major role obligation at work, school or home. In the movie, Alice showed this symptoms too. For example, at work, a girl came to find her because of a boy glance her breast and caused sexual harassment to the girl, Alice cannot really solved the problem for the girl. Plus, the position of her sitting in the office when talking to the girl was not appropriate too. The sitting position might gave a kind of rejection feeling for the girl who is talking to her. Moreover, because of drinking alcohol, she even left her daughter behind in some places, where she cannot even remember.

In this movie, one of the causes of Alice's alcoholism might be genetic, because her father was also an alcoholism. The other cause might be because of her husband, Michael, an pilot. He always fly off to work and do not stay in the house for a couple days. In the beginning of the movie, I thought that Alice drinks because she might feel lonely and helpless when her husband not around. She drinks to get her husband's attention and care more. But later in the movie, when Alice came back from treatment, I can get a fully understanding about the whole movie. The reason she drinks because she always felt weak and helplessness about herself, no matter at work or home. Drinking alcohol makes her feels better and confidence to do things. Fortunately, she able to recover from her alcoholism in the help of her daughters, friends and also the love of her husband.

As the spouse of an alcoholism, Michael, of course, also suffered from some kind of emotional abuse at home. However, he denies the fact. He always do his best to love his wife. Even though his wife is an alcoholism, he still loves her very much. However, maybe because Michael is a professional pilot, he cannot received the fact that he got emotional abuse. When he visits a treatment where alcoholism's family attend, he said that those people are sorry for themselves and rather be an victim than try to fix the problems. In Michael's point of view, any problems can be fix if you try and if anything is scheduled, just rescheduled it. Michael has his own ways of problem solution to his family. Michael's behavior makes Alice feels irritated, because she felt that she is useless beside him and belittled by him. When I saw this scene, I suddenly feel that an overwhelmed love can actually makes one suffer too, in a sense that they just love the other using their own ways, without asking or listening others' opinion.

In the scene where Michael and Alice had a big fight, Michael left home. During the days he left the home, he began to reflects on himself by attending the group therapy for alcoholism family. Alice also doing well too in her recovery treatment, and even give talks to other alcoholism patients. In the end of the movie, Alice said her side of story and also her reason to shut her husband out because she do not want to let Michael see her weakness side. On the other hand, when Alice finished her talk, Michael appeared and reflected himself to Alice, saying that although his wife going through hard times and he helped to solve it, but he lacks listening to her wife, really listening. That is the reason why he made his wife felt irritated and suffering. From here, I also realized one thing that, love requires listening too. In order to maintain relationship, one must love and care for each others, but that also requires listening and tolerant, because if only one-side always giving effort and one-side do not, they will get hurt and will not last long. Fortunately, the movie end in a happy ending, where Alice stops to drink alcohol for 184 days, and Michael realized what he had done and reflect on it. This also showed that one must not escape from reality, but to face it in order to solve any problems.

Chariots of Fire (1981)

"Chariots of Fire" is a movie about two British young men, who came from different background, a determined Jew and devoted Christian compete in the Olympics Games on 1924. The director of this movie used real life incident to shoot it. It was quite an impressed movie because it is consider a part of history especially to those youngster these days as it is quite an old movie. 

In the movie, Eric Liddell, a devoted Christian and a rugby player was encouraged by Sandy, his friend to run again. While the Scot citizen having a welcoming home party for Eric and his family, Sandy use this chance to ask Eric to run to show his paces to Scotland. And through this race, Eric's father and Sandy can see that Eric still has the passion to run. As expected, he won the race too in Scotland. Later Sandy and Eric's persuade him to run again for Olympic.

In the movie, Eric said this before, that he feel God's pleasure while he run and when he win, he honor God. I think, as an audience, the motivation to make Eric to run is from his beliefs to God, because he believe that God made him for a purpose. God motivates him to run in every races. For a devoted Christian like Eric, running on a Sabbath Day, which is Sunday, is against God's law, because Sabbath Day is a day to worship the Lord. Although the Olympic race is in Sabbath Day, Eric still refuse to run despite the objection of the Olympic committee, because of his faith to God. Fortunately, Lord Lindsay suggested to change Eric's race to 400m run, the problem solved and everyone agreed with it. 

Usually, for an athlete who are trained to run 100m is difficult to run 400m, because of the length of the race, their stamina and different strategy used in the race. However, because of Eric's faith in God,  he run as fast as he can until he can see the end of the tape. Plus, his strong rival from USA, Taylors underestimate Eric because of his coach's word. I think that these are the reason why he win the race.   

For another character, Harold Abraham, is a determined Jew, a fast runner and also a good singer. Harold is known as a fast runner and no one beat him in the race until Eric's appearance. In the beginning when Harold run, he run to win in no matter what cost but within the rules. If the races he run did not win, he will quit. This showed that Harold is a very competitive guy and must hold his place firmly. But when he and Eric met in the race, he lost to Eric and he also gain fear of losing within himself. 

Harold cannot accept the fact that he lose to Eric, because he is the best until now and did not lose before. Moreover, he thinks that he cannot improve anymore. But at this time, Mr. Mussabini approach him, encourage him and give him personal training, because all this time Harold was trained alone for every race and did not receive proper training. In order to beat Eric and other fast runner in the next race, Harold trained very hard. After going through Mr. Mussabini's hard training, Harold seems to improve his running. However, the fear of losing still with Harold. During the Olympic Games when Harold receiving body massage from his coach, he confessed his feeling to his friend that he is afraid of win after all what had happened. 

Just on that day, where Harold has his final race in Olympic, he received a letter from his coach, encouraging him, support him to run and also gave him a charm, which his coach's father swore by it. The encouragement of his coach and his friends help Harold to overcome the fear in himself, and run all his might and win the race. 

Conclusion, as an athlete myself, I can feel the feelings inside the movie. The motivation, the losing, the encouragement and winning. But in the last scene of the movie, I realized that Harold and Eric actually became friend although they were rivals or maybe enemy, but sports bring them as one and together. This is quite a good and touching movie.

Dances with Wolves

Movie "Dances with Wolves" is a movie about an Union Army Officer, Lieutenant John J. Dunbar, who requested to be promote to the frontier post, which is an Indian country, and his lifestyle in the frontier post, where he make friends with the wolves and Indians, and to the extent that change his viewpoint of being White man.

This movie is about racism too in the 1860s, which talks about the prejudice that the U.S people have in the Indians. For me, John Dunbar is an open minded person, because in the movie, he was different with other U.S army, he was willing to communicate with the Indians, share things with them, fight for them too. And on the other hand, I think that "Kicking Bird" is also a wise man, because of his patient and open minded too, he first try to approach John Dunbar, where everyone of the Indians were actually opposed it.

In this movie, I learn that individuals can actually change their perspectives to a group that they had prejudice before if they try to understand their culture and values. When the time goes by, John Dunbar actually adopted the Indians culture and understand them, although in the beginning he cannot really understand it. For example, when one scene, where the Pawnies loses the battle with the Indians, and the Indians took down one of the Pawnies in the river, John Dunbar said this word in his mind that the Indians did not fight for territory or make men free, but fight for to preserve the food stores and protect the lives of their loved ones, and it made John Dunbar decided to look it in a new way and he felt pride in himself in this battle. Plus, when become friends to the Indians, John Dunbar realized that many of the negative thoughts of Indians that he were told was not true, it also means that many White man have negative prejudice to the Indians. And so as the Indians too.

In this movie, I found that "Wind of His Hair" is quite an interesting character too. Although in the beginning of the movie he was strongly object the idea of approaching John Dunbar, because he hate the White man and said that they do not know how to shoot, how to ride and they are dirty. But after few times of interaction with John Dunbar and food sharing, and even shirt trading, he began to change his perspective as well. He did not act so friendly with John Dunbar, but his initial heart is quite a warm person and express his friendship love to John Dunbar differently. In the last scene, he went up to the hill and shout out loud to John Dunbar that he will be his best friend forever while doing the last farewell to John Dunbar. It is quite a touching scene and showed another kind of expression too.

Moreover, cannot miss this scene is that I think that most of the Whites and even the audiences who watched this movie in the beginning will form a negative prejudice to the Indians first, because they mistaken that the Pawnies are the Indians due to their similar appearances. In my case, I actually did mistaken the Pawnies are the Indians because in the beginning of the movie, showed three Indian guys (who is actually Pawnies) killed Timmon, the guy who took John Dunbar to the frontier, in a very crucial way. At that time, I was thinking why these Indians are so cruel, they killed the Whites and stole their property too. But after watching the movie until the end, I only managed to understand that the Pawnies are the bad ones, and the Indians, which is Sioux, are the kind ones.

Finally in conclusion, I think that to understand one's culture and values is very important before having any negative thoughts on others. Even if is from the same race and ethnicity, there always have good and bad ones inside. So for the other minority races, they also have good and bad ones too.  As in Malaysia context, I remember I was kind of prejudice too, towards the Malay and Indians. But after having friends who are Malays and Indians, my perspectives actually changed and understand that everyone is the same, regardless their skin color. Therefore, do not judge one person by their appearance is what I have learned in this movie, and also try to understand them as well.