Solomon Grundy Week: Buried on Sunday – The Funeral

It’s Sunday. For the seventh and final day of Solomon Grundy Week, let’s take a look at 1984’s The Funeral. The first feature of Japanese writer/director Juzo Itami, this comedy, satire, drama explores a woman (played by Nobuko Miyamoto) and her husband (played by Tsutomu Yamazaki) hosting their family for three days as they gather for a funeral for the woman’s father. The film focuses on those left behind, mourning, regret, and the continuing, never-ending, and sometimes ridiculous complications of life.

Solomon Grundy Week: Died on Saturday – Ikiru

It’s Saturday. For day six of Solomon Grundy Week, let’s examine life with Akira Kurosawa’s classic 1952 drama, Ikiru. Starring Kurosawa regular Takashi Shimura, Ikiru follows an aging Japanese city council bureaucrat who discovers he’s dying from cancer and seeks to find meaning and purpose in his life before it’s over.

Solomon Grundy Week: Grew Worse on Friday – Dying at Grace

It’s Friday. For day five of Solomon Grundy week, I look at the 2003 Canadian documentary Dying at Grace. Directed by Canadian Allan King, the film follows five patients dying of cancer in the palliative care ward at Toronto Grace Health Centre in Toronto, Ontario. The patients and their loved ones look back at life and discuss and deal with the terminal illness.

Skip this section if you’re (understandably) not up to it: 5:57-6:21.

This section doesn’t fall under the category I describe in the video, but it’s still a lot. So, maybe skip this one, too, if you’re (again understandably) not up to it: 9:39-9:42.