I can think of few better ways to imagine life after death than remembering life before birth. This scepticism has never prevented enjoyment of a good afterlife yarn however. And on the face of it this one directed by Jeremy Herrin and adapted by Jack Thorne (of the triumphant Harry Potter and the Cursed Child stage show) from Hirokazu Kore-eda’s movie of 1998 has all the makings of a good one.
Designer Bunnie Christie elegantly evokes a staging post between life and afterlife. This is a place with an infinity of filing cabinets which reassuringly suggests that there is method beyond the seeming randomness of death.
This, we discover, is where we all end up before transitioning to the other side. But only for three days during which time our task is to identify the one memory that evokes the emotion which we want to carry for eternity. To this end it is the job of numbered guides such as Luke Thallon’s old — or is it public — school functionary Two to view the reels of someone’s life. The unedited rushes (as film folk call the immediate results of a shoot) aid the recreation of the appropriate memory.
June Watson’s elderly Beatrice is too worried about who is going too look after her cat to concentrate on what she wants to feel for the next gazillion years. But she is eventually coaxed into identifying the moment. It’s when she waltzed with the only man she ever loved, the brother she lived with , whom she nursed until his death.
