In director Michihito Fujii’s newly released Netflix drama The Parades, death is not an ending. Instead of the finality of crossing over to the other side, this dreamy Japanese film characterizes humanity’s transition to the afterlife in the form of a recurring parade. Specifically, it’s a monthly procession wherein the souls of those who’ve died set out in search of the loved ones they hope to see again and reconnect with. Along the way, they also learn more about their fellow departed companions.
In the process, the dead also get the closure they need, which allows them to move on from their limbo between life and death. It’s heady stuff, and it makes for an absolutely breathtaking story.
The Parades opens with a mother watching her son Ryo scamper around a beach as waves lap at the shore. The boy turns back occasionally to wave at her, while we’re watching the scene from her perspective. We can see her hand reach out for the boy, while the only sound is an ethereal, synth-heavy soundtrack. And then — there’s an abrupt cut to a disorienting scene of rushing water, air bubbles, and detritus floating all around, the sort of thing you’d see if you were drowning.
A drone shot from high above fills in the details. The water is once again calm, as the drone slowly pans up to reveal a shoreline littered with trash and corpses. Minako, the mother who’d been playing her son, wakes up amid that devastation and begins searching frantically for the boy. Rescue workers don’t respond when she approaches and begs for help.
The movie doesn’t make you wait long to reveal that Minako is actually dead. That’s because the payoff here isn’t some last-act, Sixth Sense-style twist. The Parades is more concerned with saying something meaningful and profound about human connection and love, the sorts of things that don’t die just because people do.
As she kind of stumbles around in a daze, trying to make sense of her new reality, she encounters a group of departed souls like her that ends becoming a kind of surrogate family for her. They occupy an abandoned fairgrounds just outside of town, and the group includes a film producer, a member of the yakuza, a high school girl, and a bank manager — and Minako, who was a journalist but now only cares about what happened to her son.
Watching the backstory of each character unfold is a masterclass in subtly and exquisite storytelling. These quiet, beautiful scenes are so good, you wish they could linger a little longer. Like when the former yakuza member goes to visit a loved one who can’t see or hear him; he marvels aloud at how she hasn’t changed a bit, and he tells her he’s sorry. Or pretty much anytime Michael, the former film producer, is on-screen. He died before getting to finish his magnum opus, a romantic film based partly on his own life during the student protests of 1968.
Michael convinces the rest of the lost and wandering souls in his orbit to help him finish the movie and try to get it seen by the people he left behind. Which, I suppose, is The Parades making a declaration about the power of not only human connection but also art to transcend death. “From your cherished ones to you,” the movie promises, “the parade of love goes on.”
Check out a trailer for The Parades below.