Main Cast: Tsutomu Yamazaki, Nobuko Miyamoto, Kin Sugai, Ichiro Zaitsu, Chishu Ryu
Release Year: 1984
Country: JP
Run Time: 124 minutes
Plot
The directorial debut of Juzo Itami, this irreverent black comedy satirizes death and burial customs in a surprising manner for a Japanese film. Trendy film actress Chizuko (Nobuko Miyamoto) and her actor husband Wabisuke (Tsutomu Yamazaki) must rush from a movie set to mourn Chizuko's honored elderly father. The three-day wake is dramatized with rich comic detail and a funny supporting cast including Shuji Otaki, Kin Sugai, and Chishu Ryu as a greedy priest. Although Itami had yet to perfect the deft comic touch which made Tampopo (1986) such a treat, this darkly funny satire is still wonderfully entertaining and surprisingly touching. ~ Robert Firsching, All Movie Guide
Review
The Loved One did it first, but The Funeral did it better. Tony Richardson's 1965 adaptation of the Evelyn Waugh portrait of life and death in Los Angeles was a hit-and-miss film that tried to take in too many targets. Juzo Itami's debut film is more modest, though just as outrageous in some of its scenes (the mistress of the bereaved son-in-law demanding sexual satisfaction in the woods near the site of the wake, for instance). Itami, unlike Waugh and Richardson, is an insider; he's aware that when it comes to funerals, many contemporary Japanese are caught between their instincts (do it quick and cheap) and their sense of tradition and duty. Most telling are the scenes in which the grieving daughter and her husband resort to an instructional video for tips on, for example, how to register the right kind of moans at the service. As with a wedding, the expenses keep mounting, with each person who provides a service taking full advantage of the grieving family's distraction and ignorance. Though Tampopo has proved to be Itami's biggest hit in the States, this film offers a more substantial meal; it will certainly appeal to fans of HBO's superb drama series Six Feet Under. ~ Tom Wiener, All Movie Guide
The film shows the preparations for a traditional Japanese funeral. It mixes grief at the loss of a husband and father with wry observations of the various characters as they interact during the three days of preparation.
The Funeral was the writing and directing debut of Itami Juzo, and was an enormous success in Japan. It won five Japanese Academy Awards, including Best Film, Best Director and Best Actor (Tsutomu Yamazaki). It was nominated in a further five categories and also came first in the annual Kinema Junpo critics' poll.
Plot
Shokichi Amamiya (Otaki Shuji) is a difficult 69-year-old man, married to Kikue (Sugai Kin). He dies suddenly of a heart complaint, and it falls to his daughter Chizuko (Miyamoto Nobuko) and son-in-law Wabisuke Inoue (Yamazaki Tsutomu) to organize the funeral at their house.
Among other things, the family have to choose a coffin, hire a priest, hold a wake, learn formal funeral etiquette and hold the service itself.
During the three days of preparation, various tensions within the family are hinted at, such as resentment of a rich but stingy uncle, Inoue's affair with a younger woman, and possibly an affair the dead man himself had with a female croquet player.
After the service, the long suffering wife delivers a dignified speech to the family regretting that the hospital would not let her be with her husband as he died.
