「Still Life」-- Being Connected with Alives

************這篇影評可能有雷************

Neat with everything in order, simple like a dinner with toast and fish can, he lives a stable, steady, or even still life, never thinking about changing or losing the job. Preparing a funeral for the passed-aways, finding a impossible man to attend the ceremony is the work he does everyday. He collects the photos in an album orderly as a mark of 「case closed」. No family, no friends or lovers, the only company is the photo collection of the gone strangers.

As his age, changing the job and exploring the new possibilities cannot be practical for a man who has been doing the invariable and boring job for 20 or more years. If he is set as a positive and active white-collar, the tone of the story would not be slow with a hint of sorrow. Exactly with that lukewarm but persistent character can motivate the strong reaction after informed to be laid-off: with no effort to organize a different and special funeral for 比利 Stoke.

Then he starts to gather the possible people to attend the ceremony. Repetitively, goes and comes, searching for the people who knows something about 比利 to write a marvelous eulogy. He determined to do his last case well as a mark of period and a new beginning, and he finally touch Kelly, 比利’s daughter to be present at the memorial but unfortunately hit by a bus and gone. No one likes to see May and Kelly miss each other but the screenwriter did arrange a sad ending for him. But the director has gave us some hints to imply the death of May. When he more than once sees the reflection of himself in the window of his dead neighbor, and 比利’s funeral is the last case of May which in some way is the farewell ceremony for him. It’s time to say goodbye, the great man who always says goodbye.

Kelly may someday find the tomb of the man who ever broke the appointment, but the date will remind her to salute, deeply.

Besides, the music is remarkable. Simple melody but arranged in various styles, brisk when he forwards on the train with happy emotion and plod when he backwards on the train in sad mood. Some humorous scene is a reconciliation of the slow and hard atmosphere, which is also very impressive in this film.