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If you were asked to choose one memory out of your whole life span to take with you
into the afterlife, which would you choose? The film After Life by Hirokazu Koreeda
asks the question for both the characters in the film and spectators to think of which
memory is their very existence. In this essay, I will look further into Deleuzes crystal
image, memory-images defined by Bergson and what they mean for our identity as
individuals in time, as well as how Koreeda criticizes the official Japan in After Life,
considering the awaiting is made up of mostly elderly people whom experienced the
war years in Japan, for erasing some of Japans history, and concealing it in a
memory box. Koreeda explores deep metaphysical issues on life and death in a
poetized fashion. Andrei Tarkovsky is also known for his cinematic poetry and timeimage is Mirror. With that in mind, I will create a link between these two films. They
are both about memories, but also what the meaning of making film is. (Artistic
Licence Films, unknown year).

The awaiting come to an abandoned factory which is a stage between life and death,
limbo. They are given a week to choose one memory to take with them to the
beyond. The memory they choose is that of the crystal-image which Deleuze (1989)
has written about, highly influenced by the great philosopher Henri-Louis Bergson.
According to Bergsonian terms; , the real object is reflected in a mirror-image as in
the virtual object which, from its side and simultaneously, envelops or reflects the
real: there is a coalescence between the two. (Deleuze, 1984, p.68) The image is
composited of two faces, actual and virtual. You are being aware of your own
persona, and having what we popularly refer to as an outer body experience. The
experience is a reflection of the self. The awaiting in After Life are given the chance

to reenact one single memory of their recollection, and thereby they are actualizing a
virtual image and mirroring it into the present. It cannot be the same, because it is
impossible to duplicate a virtual-image which already exists within someone. For that
you would need a time machine, and such an apparatus has yet to be invented.
Bergson wrote; It is necessary for the image to pass at the same time as it is
present, at the moment it is present. Therefore, the image ought to act as present
and past, simultaneously occurring as present and past. The character Iseya
wonders why he cannot choose a dream as it also consists of mental images. By
asking this question, he suggests that memory is bound between reality and dreams,
which is not the case if we are harmonizing with Bergsons words. Though, he is onto
something by saying that memories might feel very real and yet we cannot reexperience them. Bergson, cited by Deleuze (1984), emphasizes how important it is
to distinguish pure recollection from mental-images - recollection-images or images
which are actualized in consciousness or psychological states. We should have no
more difficulty in admitting the virtual insistence of pure recollections in time than we
do for the actual existence of non-perceived objects in space. (Deleuze, 1984, p.80)
The awaiting coming to the afterlife have in common that they choose an
autobiographical memory which is, according to William F. Brewer (1986) an ego-self:
single-memory; When an individual experience a single event of some type, the
phenomenal aspect of the recall of the particular experience is a personal memory
They are experienced as a partial relieving of the original experience and typically
have a strong visual component. (Brewer, 1986, p.30) Furthermore, the memory
workers and the awaiting do not try to recreate a duplicate of a memory they only
wish for the sensation of recalling. There is even an older lady whom cannot
remember the dance which is a crucial part of her chosen memory, but it does not

matter. What they want is the soaring sensation of being taken aback in a dreamlike
sense. If we consider the similarity these memoir images have with dream images,
then although they are recalled vividly, certain elements are naturally blurred out. It is
important to emphasize neither the memory workers nor the awaiting make not
remembering the memory perfectly a negative experience. Bergson (2004) wrote that
former images disappear hindered by our present attitude. (Bergson, 2004, p.114)
Jeremy Mark Robinson (2007) wrote that in Mirror by Tarkovsky Natalia and Ignat
are in scene 16 sitting on the floor in the Moscow apartment. The mother slips her
handbag. The boy says he is experiencing dj vu from one of the coins. Intimations
of reincarnation here, and cyclical mythologies (as well as the physical world not
being the limits of the world, a recurring theme in Tarkovskyd uvre). (Robinson,
2007, p.418).
The afterlife-world the characters are in can easily be translated by Heidegger,
collected by Stephen Mulhall (1996), to Daseins words as death is a way to be; it is
not an event but an existential possibility, a mode of its Being. Death is the possibility
of its own impossibility, of Daseins-no-longer-to-be-there. (Mulhall, 1996, p.116).
Shiori is, as a memory worker, able to go back to our world, but she is not really
being-there. No one nor nothing acknowledges her presence. For Heidegger death
is; that possibility which is ones ownmost, which is non-relational, and which is not
to be outstripped. Koreeda has stripped away Shioris bond, interaction, to our
world and entirely isolated her whilst being amongst a large crowd of people.
(Mulhall, 1996, p. 117) I think the loneliness she is sporting is a feeling anyone can
recognize as an individual in a larger group. In Jonathan Strauss (2000) article on
what is after death, he wrote For Hegel, death is an active nonbeing that affects life
as a force of personal and historical change. Somewhat like brutally creative nature

envisioned by Sades libertines. Hegels Geist or human spirit recreates itself through
the power of death, using the destruction of what was to make what is and will be,
constantly moving toward an even richer understanding of an adequation to itself.
(Strauss, 2000, p.90-104).
Alanna Thain (2011) points out that in After Life it is suggested Shiori had a
troublesome relationship with her mother. After one of her clients tells her that her
happiest memory is of being in the womb. Shiori tries taking a bath to re-enact the
warmth and security one feels in a mothers womb after hearing about it from one of
the memory workers. (Thain, 2011, p.63). She is not able to let go of her past and
looks back instead of choosing a memory to move on. This can be associated with
Orpheus crime of looking back. If he would have realized his lover is a part of him he
could have held her once again in the actual life. Shiori helps Michozuki remember
his past by looking through the video tapes which are his memory bank. This helps
Michozuki recall a memory of being love by his wife Kyoko. Shiori is passive in the
present and mad at Michozuki for finally choosing a memory, because she is in love
with him. She is in a dark place and does naturally not want to be left alone. Shiori
staying aback lets one slip their mind to work of Kierkegaard (cited in Eriksen, 2000,
p.14-15); If all is becoming, it is not even possible to pass a river at once, as
Kierkegaard notes with reference to a famous sentence by Heraclitus. Shiori swears
she will keep the memory of him in her. She is becoming in her being. (Eriksen, 2000,
p.14-15
In conclusion, which one memory would you choose to take with you into the
afterlife? No matter how much you give it a think, it is a very difficult question. If we
choose a pure virtual memory like Michozuki then we are able to absolutely
intertwine the past and present. The awaiting and memory workers watching the

memory film, turn their memories into a collective-memory, and are thereby also
eternalized through them and the spectators who watch After Life. Yet, why does it
have to be only one memory? I would propose the question a way to remember us of
our mortality, and at the same time that we have a freedom of choice. In the words of
Heidegger, cited by Stephen Mulhall (1996); only by relating to death understood
as a possibility can my existence become at once genuinely individual and genuinely
whole. (Mulhall, 1996). It is order to complete our oneness. It makes us, even after
the duration of the film, think about what memory we would choose for ourselves. In
doing that we are also eternalizing the film in our virtuality. Nobody ask us if we want
to be born and life does not ask us if we want to die. Finally, we have a choice great
as our very existence. What will remain in the world is memory.

Works cited
After Life [film] 1998. Directed by Hirokazu Koreeda. Japan: Engine Film, Sputnik
Productions and TV Man Union
Artistic Licence Films. unknown year. After Life: A Film by Hirokazu Koreeda. [viewed
17 Dec 2015]. Available from: http://www.artlic.com/press/kits/afterlif.html
BERGSON. H. 2004. Matter and Memory. Mineola, NY: Dover
BREWER. W. F., 1986. What is Autobiographical Memory?. In: RUBIN. D. C., Ed.
Autobiographical Memory. Cambridge: Cambridge UP
British Film Institute. 2012. This is Your Life. [viewed 17 Dec 2015]. Available from:
http://old.bfi.org.uk/sightandsound/feature/147
DELEUZE. G., 1989. Cinema 2: The Time-Image. London: Athlone Press
ERIKSEN. N. N., 2000. Kierkegaards Category of Repetition: A Reconstruction
LARSEN. H. A., 2011. Knut Hamsun. [Online]. USA: Project Gutenberg. [Accessed
17 Dec 2015] Available from: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/36754/36754-h/36754h.htm
Mirror [film] 1975. Directed by Andrei Tarkovsky. Soviet Union: Mosfilm
MULHALL. S., 1996. Heidegger and Being and Time. London: Routledge
ROBINSON. J. M., 2007. The Sacred Cinema of Andrei Tarkovsky. Maidstone:
Crescent Moon
STRAUSS. J., 2000. After Death. Post-Mortem: The State of Death as a Modern
Construct, 30(3), 90-94+96-104

SRENSEN. L-M., 2011. Realitys Poetry: Kore-eda Hirokazu Between Fact and
Fiction. Film Criticism, 35(2-3), 2
THAIN. A., 2011. Death Every Sunday Afternoon: The Virtual Memories of Hirokazu
Kore-Edas Afterlife. In: SINHA. A., and MCSWEENEY. T. Eds. Millennial Cinema:
Memory in Global Film. London: Wallflower. Pp. 55-40