AFTER LIFE: more questions asked than answered

There's no escape from bureaucracy even after death if AFTER LIFE is to be believed.
Rather than shuffling off this mortal coil and straight through the doorway to either heaven or hell there's a waiting room in a drab school building, an interview and some homework to be navigated first.
This low budget 1998 Japanese drama, shot in a semi-documentary style, follows a group of recently deceased people as they pass through this nondescript way station en route to eternity. Each of them is assigned to a caseworker who, after notifying them officially that they are dead, asks them to choose one memory from their life to take with them into the here-after.

Once selected, the caseworker and his colleagues will recreate the memory in a short film to be screened to the deceased before every other memory is erased from their mind and they're sent on their way.
For some it's an easy decision while others struggle to recall anything meaningful or worthwhile despite encouragement and gentle guidance from their caseworker.
AFTER LIFE's concept of an afterworld run by civil servants through which the newly dead are forced to transit is nothing new. I was reminded of the 1944 Warner Brothers drama "Between Two Worlds" with the wonderful Sydney Greenstreet as the white suited celestial examiner whose stamp of approval was required to pass through the Pearly Gates.
But in director Hirokazu Koreeda's imagining we are not judged for our actions on Earth nor asked to justify our behaviour. The task of the caseworkers here is not to determine who is worthy of heaven and who should be damned to hell. In fact it's made clear early on that these alternatives don't even exist. Their job is to encourage each of the deceased to review the entire span of their life and come to a thoughtful decision on which moment of it was really most important to them. Which one memory will keep them happy through all eternity.
There's much here to engage our curiosity, from the participants' complete lack of distress at being dead, to grappling with the idea of being burdened with just one memory for the rest of time and beyond. Surely even the happiest recollection will eventually drive you mad if it's the replayed over and over with no ability to switch it off.
AFTER LIFE also leaves the notion of the ultimate hereafter to our imagination. No one expresses any interest in their final destination and no information is offered. Perhaps the dead are too engrossed in appraising their past to wonder about the future.
What I found most disconcerting is that this after life appears to exist on the same plane as life as we know it now. Traffic passes by on the street beyond the school and, in one sequence, a young caseworker walks into the city centre and looks in shop windows as the yet-to-be-deceased pass her by without reaction. She is a ghost in their midst, visible yet unseen.
This all adds up to a story that will frustrate those who insist on a strong degree of closure at the end of their films. The relentless focus on the everyday, sometimes mundane, activities of the caseworkers and their clients leaves no time for exploration of metaphysical ideas of life after death. 
That's not a criticism it's a compliment because it leaves us space for our imagination to roam. Thought-provoking and tender yet unsentimental, AFTER LIFE will definitely provoke reflection and debate.