I read through most of the external reviews I usually read - Ebert, The Village Voice etc., and looked through the user's comments... It seems everybody has been swept away by this tidal wave of schmaltz! I'm hoping it's simply that those who feel like me just haven't bothered to write. (Ebert has long become sentimental with age...) Isn't this film SO affected, so infantile in its sentimentality? Yes it has a core of beauty, and the potential for being a superb, emotionally devastating film. But it isn't. It's a waste of its material. The one positive element was the ceremony, which at certain moments in the film was protected by a tone of solemnity from the lavish, exaggerated, coarse emotional manipulation on a level with the sappiest soap opera. Another perhaps was the undertaker boss. How very sad. I wish a good director would do a remake and turn it into the polished gem it could have been. But as it is - how can so many people buy into this? Where are the critics??!
Review of Departures
