benjaminteicher.com – freelance writer

Its an excuse trotted out again and again by those accused of drug trafficking at airports.

‘Its not mine,’ or ‘Somebody must have planted it there’.

I’d always assumed that it was a fabrication, a final and implausible plea for freedom by those facing years, decades even, in a dank, overcrowded prison thousands of miles from home.

Now, I’m not so sure.

It was Christmas Eve. I had passed security at Marrakesh Airport and was waiting my turn in an achingly slow passport queue.

Eventually, my brother overcame this hurdle, and then I presented my passport and waited in silent amicability for the requisite checks and stamps. As the official was about to conclude I was seized from behind by a Moroccan police officer, marched back to security and into a small curtained booth.

All the while, the officer spoke to me in French while I called out ‘Anglais, Anglais’ and protested that French is no longer the international language (I jest.). He did give me a funny look, though, as if to say, ‘Come on, you know what I’m saying.’

Inside the booth he presented me with two of the aforementioned condoms packed with something – hash, heroin, I don’t know. Now I’m not certain whether he did switch to English, or whether in this moment of desperation we spoke in some kind of universal language, but from here on I understood what he was saying.

‘They are yours,’ he said.
‘Non,’ I replied. Needless to say, I had not seen these items until this moment.
‘They are yours,’ he said again.
‘Non.’
He felt around my cock and balls to see if I was concealing anything. Another officer slipped through the curtain and double checked his partner’s work.
‘They are yours!’ They said in unison.
‘Non!’ I shrieked.
‘Passport.’
I handed it over and the pair scrutinised it, muttering ‘Australian’ under their breath.
‘You are here with a child. You came before with a child.’
‘Non.’
‘Yes a child.’
‘No, just my brother and he’s gone through.’
‘You were here with a child!’
‘Non!’
Clearly, the officer was stressed now that his gutsy arrest was rapidly fragmenting into a case of mistaken identity.
The two men muttered with one another, pointing at the passport and at me.
The original officer turned to me and flicked his wrist without saying a word. I was dismissed.

I could not feel the airport tiles beneath my feet.

We watched Departures tonight and I would have enjoyed it if the gap between the film and its rave reviews hadn’t been so wide.

Mediocre cellist Daigo Kobayashi quits his musical career and moves back to the countryside of his youth along with his wife. With no other options, Kobayashi takes up work as an ‘Encoffineer’, a job that takes in both practical and ceremonial measures to repare bodies for the afterlife. Surprising himself (though not any half-intelligent audience) his new line of work becomes the catalyst for Kobayashi’s emotional transformation. By preparing others to move beyond life, Kobayashi gains the strength to face the traumas that are holding back his own.

Nicholas Barber in The Independent, for example, said ‘this heartfelt, unpretentious, slyly funny Japanese film is worth waiting for’ and it took the award for Best Foreign Language Film at the Academy Awards (although that means nothing to me) and a host of others.

Its not that what people say is wholly untrue. It is witty and at times quite touching. And Takeshi Hameda’s cinematography brings a sincerity and stillness that is a perfect frame for Departures’ moments of genuine, simple humour.

But at other moments Departures risks crossing over into sentimentality, even schmaltz. What really got on my nerves, though, was the character of Kobayashi’s wife who was not much more than a prop, skin deep, without the conflicts and desires that humanise a character. Perhaps the Japanese masters of electronics have invented smiling, sympathetic robots to accompany sensitive men on their emotional journeys.

These superficialities prevent Departures from approaching the cinematic meditations on death of a master like Akira Kurosawa, films like Ikiru or his finale Adadayo.

Despite the hype, Departures just isn’t that good.