A good movie

According to Roger Ebert, this was one of the best movies coming out in 2009 and it won the Academy Award fot the best foreign movie so I was definitely curious about it. It had been a while since I watched a Japanese movie and within the first 10 minutes, I understood why I was always loved these movies. Indeed, the directing and acting was so understated and quite fascinating to behold and it is such a big difference with Western movies, especially American movies, which tends to explain every single thing happening on the screen, something which is in fact rather boring. Furthermore, this movie was about a very interesting ceremony dealing with the cleansing of dead bodies before they are cremated. It was something we obviously don't have in the Western culture and those proceedings were rather emotional and mesmerizing to watch. Still, even though I really liked this movie, it was still missing something to become really awesome. Maybe it was because there were some humorous bits during the first half which were rather superfluous or maybe it was because the characters were not really fascinating. Still, it was a very well made drama, it gave a very interesting view on Japanese culture and traditions and it is definitely worth a look, especially if you are interested in Japanese movies.