After Life (2003… I think)

This flick was mentioned some time ago–but I just saw it, and at the least thought I’d throw up another nod. The scenario is a post-death fantasy where the recently-departed are asked to pick a single memory which they will inhabit (or something–we’re never really sure) from thereon out. What I liked especially was the rigorous sidestepping of whimsy or fantasy; the afterlife is a very solid place, the workers there follow a specific bureaucracy, and–nicest touch–the memory chosen is then reconstructed on film, a material re-enactment which the workers undertake very concretely (location scouting, sound effects, etc.).

Memory, Kincaid (aka Marco) will be glad to hear, is examined with both compassion and a shrewd dispassion. Everyone is making up what they need, and part of the bureaucrats’ job is to get people to recognize how they’re shaping, reshaping, fabulating a past…. But fabulation is not explicitly challenged or mocked–the “real” (material) re-enactment is itself explicitly a construction, but one consciously chosen and shaped…

Smart, engaging, very recommended.