Message 649

Yesterday I read some more of The Economist. In the evening I went to San Mateo for the regular family dinner. Julian had fixed a pot of chili. It reminded me of Chris's favorite meal to cook. In the evening there was nothing except fundraisers on PBS. I suppose they figured most people would be watching the Oscars. I watched a DVD of the Japanese movie Departures, which won the Academy Award for best foreign film in 2008. I was not expecting much from it, so I was again amazed at how good it was and how strongly it affected me. It dealt with some of my favorite subjects like life, death, music, work, and love. The photography was beautiful, and the subtitles were easy to read and not distracting. One the best things was the cello music. The story is: a classical cello player loses his job when the orchestra goes broke because few people go to their concerts. He then leaves Tokyo with his wife and goes back to his home in the country that was left to him by his mother who died a few years before. He then finds meaning in his life in an unlikely line of work, the ritual preparation of bodies for cremation. I give it five stars.