Orphée (1950)

It's the one affair nosotros all take coming, the one thing no 1 has e'er returned from to written report upon, and therefore the single greatest mystery – speculated, philosophised, prayed and written virtually since life began: what happens to united states afterward we die?

"Nothing" might exist a reasonable, rational guess for scientists and atheists alike, but it's a fairly unsatisfying stance for artists to take. Long before cinema'southward nascency, painters, poets and composers attempted, largely inspired by religion, to get to grips with the afterlife. Accordingly, heaven and hell, angels and devils, featured prominently. Ghosts crept into the mix too, spiritual or secular, just always with unfinished business concern here on World. It made shuffling off our mortal coil seem more than like an ongoing journeying than final destination. Whether something to fear, or eternal salvation, the afterlife was very much a living, breathing presence, not an absence.

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Movies take long taken reward of this, taking slap-up pleasure in visualising just what lies across. Whatever their vision – thou angelic pearly gates or drab part-like piece of work space – information technology'south fascinating that the homo need to restore significant and reason to our conception of the afterlife normally wins through.

Fifty-fifty a genuinely great, original film similar Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's A Matter of Life and Death (1946) tin't help just organise a procedure for what happens 'upward there'. And no thing how close to the truth whatsoever of these filmmakers below may or may non be, their works show that there's no end to the human imagination.

Hither Comes Mr. Jordan (1941)

Director: Alexander Hall

Here Comes Mr. Jordan (1941)

And hither comes the romantic comedy, based on an unproduced stage play, the success of which inspired not just the wave of afterlife-themed 1940s movies (A Guy Named Joe, Heaven Can Wait, Down to Earth) merely 2 subsequent remakes. A working-class boxer is taken upwards to heaven fifty years likewise presently, and so, head honcho Mr Jordan (the great Claude Rains at his most effortlessly urbane) sends him back down in the body of a millionaire – who himself is most to be murdered…

The afterlife here is a fog-filled airdrome runway, its transit passengers processed in an orderly, though not foolproof, fashion. And while the idea of reincarnation is ripe for witty repartee and physical comedy, there's a genuinely bloodshot undertone. Hither Comes Mr. Hashemite kingdom of jordan was released simply months before Pearl Harbour and America'south entry into the Second Globe State of war, and amid the laughter emerges an undeniable tension, with the spectre of ordinary people beingness taken away earlier their time.

A Thing of Life and Death (1946)

Directors: Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger

A Matter of Life and Decease (1946)

With A Affair of Life and Expiry (known as Stairway to Sky stateside), the Archers' (Powell & Pressburger) original target was a vehicle to broaden post-Second World War Anglo-American collaboration. Working at the meridian of their powers, however, they transformed a propaganda exercise into what's likely the most magical, romantic British film ever made.

Shuttling between our world and the next, nosotros follow the plight of a young RAF pilot (David Niven) who miraculously survives being shot downwards and, as in Here Comes Mr. Hashemite kingdom of jordan, is mistakenly taken up. He's and then forced to undergo a celestial trial to prove he should be reunited with the woman he loves. It's a moving-picture show in dearest with life itself, bursting with imagination (Earth shot in vibrant colour, sky in monochrome), innovation (designer Alfred Junge'southward sweeping next-earth staircase) and witty self-awareness – when Marius Goring'southward flamboyant heavenly agent descends to rainbow-hued England, he knowingly sighs, "one is starved of Technicolor up at that place."

It's a Wonderful Life (1946)

Director: Frank Capra

It's a Wonderful Life (1946)

George Bailey (James Stewart), facing ruin and humiliation in his small hometown of Bedford Falls, feels his existence is meaningless and contemplates suicide. It takes a trainee angel, Clarence (Henry Travers), to come up downward and show Bailey simply what a difference he has fabricated to those around him, and why this everyman's – and indeed, every man'south  – life matters.

It'southward a canny shift on the afterlife scenario, effectively positing a serial of alternative, downgraded futures produced by Bailey's erasure from the by. At present a staple of festive, family, feelgood entertainment, it's easy to fix on the film's twinkly early charms and forget the raw desperation in Stewart's operation equally Bailey comes undone. He and managing director Frank Capra, scarred past their own wartime experiences, evoke a genuine darkness that makes Bailey'due south salvation all the sweeter. Information technology's a Wonderful Life is that rare film that earns its climactic tears of joy, and deserves its resurrection as a beloved American classic.

Orphée (1950)

Manager: Jean Cocteau

Orphée (1950)

In Orphée, poet and filmmaker Jean Cocteau recasts the Greek myth about the poet who descends into hell to rescue his dead wife as a unique cinematic spell about the price of an artist'south immortality. He also contorts the legend to make Decease – here personified equally a femme fatale in arm-length black gloves – an active participant in a complicated love quadrangle.

Cocteau's inventive, practical visual effects utilise mirrors, h2o and reversed film to enter the underworld, an ascetic place of abandoned ruins and stony-faced hierarchy, where Orpheus – played with heart-searching dynamism by his La Belle et la Bête star Jean Marais – makes his stand. But Cocteau'southward clear ambivalence about the sacrifices entailed in creating art gives the motion-picture show its fitting existential crisis – ane where fatality isn't necessarily bars to another dimension. "Mirrors are the doors by which decease comes," notes ane character sagely. "Look a lifetime in a mirror and you will see Death at piece of work."

Beetlejuice (1988)

Director: Tim Burton

Beetlejuice (1988)

It's surprising how regularly filmmakers cast the afterlife, a realm of surely infinite visual possibility, as gray, bureaucratic and, well, a wee bit dull. All of which made Tim Burton's breakthrough movie, with its goofy, gaudy, gothic sensibilities, a jiff of fresh air in fantasy cinema.

A recently deceased couple is desperate to rid their home of the living and so foolishly enlist the eponymous demonic 'bio-exorcist' from beyond to aid out. Beetlejuice is an infectiously fun alloy of processed-coloured visuals, stop-motion animation, unlikely calypso dance numbers, game rising Hollywood stars (Geena Davis, Alec Baldwin, Winona Ryder) and Michael Keaton's delirious, fairly adult-oriented, star turn. As befitting Burton's freak-friendly worldview, the expressionless and the living tin co-exist eccentrically always after. And though he would delve even further beyond the grave with 2005's enjoyable end-motion animation Corpse Helpmate, Beetlejuice remains "the ghost with the nearly". The afterworld never felt so alive.

Truly Madly Deeply (1990)

Director: Anthony Minghella

Truly Madly Deeply (1990)

Sometimes haughtily dismissed as "the thinking person's Ghost" due to its release presently afterwards 1990's Hollywood boom hit, Anthony Minghella's British characteristic debut is pure, raw emotion: a shattering, intimate portrait of unvarnished grief. Overwhelmed by the loss of her cellist lover Jamie (Alan Rickman), Nina (Juliet Stevenson) is even more than pole-axed when he suddenly reappears in her living room one night. Her most fervent wish granted, the realities of Jamie's reappearance, complete with amiable but intrusive friends from the hereafter, starts to bear upon on the couple'south revived relationship.

Minghella's delicate, frequently wry chamber piece deliberately keeps everything 'otherworldly' largely unspoken and off screen; hell can exist a freezing, cramped London flat. Instead he taps the process of mourning and letting go: life later decease. Originally called Cello, the film resonates with the truest, deepest, human chords, grounded past superb performances from Rickman, now himself dearly missed, and the astonishing, soul-baring Stevenson.

Defending Your Life (1991)

Director: Albert Brooks

Defending Your Life (1991)

In that location'due south a potent case that every Albert Brooks movie graphic symbol is stranded in a metaphorical Judgment City, his foibles and follies brutally scrutinised and itemised to foil whatever attempts at future happiness. Defending Your Life merely happens to make the concept literal. Here, Brooks pitches up in the afterlife pit stop where the departed must justify their virtually contempo being in court. Succeed and continue to the next phase; fail, and become a echo earthbound offender. Not the all-time time or place, then, to fall in love with saintly Meryl Streep…

Brooks has corking fun milking his purgatorial concept, Judgment Urban center every bit guilt-free holiday resort plus guilt-ridden puritanical trial, where hilarious video clips of his worst moments in life are used to condemn him. Only there's a warmth and greater optimism than usual here, buoyed by an effervescent Streep'southward then-rare lighter function. One of the 1990s' all-time comedies.

Afterwards Life (1998)

Director: Hirokazu Kore-eda

After Life (1998)

What one memory would y'all take with you lot? The recently deceased, arriving in a modest style station that resembles a nondescript though verdant Japanese retreat, get three days to decide. It'due south often not easy. A family outcome, a childhood please, a seemingly inconsequential come across? But eventually this memory of choice is then recreated and filmed past a team of dedicated caseworkers, to be your personal meaning of happiness for eternity.

Hirokazu Koreeda's brilliant conceit is to mix scripted actors with real-life testimonies in the early section, every bit if nosotros're watching an otherworldly documentary. He carefully observes the stresses on visitors and staff akin, and the sheer labour – building sets, acquiring props, inventing visual effects – of memory recreation evokes the transient yet immortal nature of filmmaking itself. Later on Life is a beautifully allusive comment on Koreeda'due south own profession and withal, quietly, insistently, so much more than: a profoundly personal, humanist masterpiece.

Enter the Void (2009)

Manager: Gaspar Noé

Enter the Void (2009)

A sensory overload from habitual shock tactician Gaspar Noé (Irreversible, 2002) that pushes boundaries from its pulsating, strobing opening titles through to its climactic intrauterine rebirth. When a young man is gunned down in a Tokyo brothel, his soul leaves his torso and Noé's first-person-POV camera follows, taking his audience on a costless-floating odyssey through the city, his by and across.

Early references to the Tibetan Book of the Dead are perhaps a cherry (or, given the film'south phantasmagorical visuals, hallucinogenic-neon) herring. Noé has claimed he doesn't believe in life after death, and yet his film definitely taps into the collective want for such a possibility, here framed as function-drug induced reverie and part-spiritual voyage. The astounding technical ability competes with and oftentimes cancels out risible dialogue and deadline exploitative sexual fascination. And whether ane shares its director's delight in provocation, you've truly never seen annihilation like this in your life.

A Ghost Story (2017)

Managing director: David Lowery

A Ghost Story (2017)

Ghosts overpopulate stories about the afterlife. Simply the best ones often show how these spirits are as much haunted as haunting. David Lowery'south atypical indie appeared, appropriately, seemingly out of nowhere to cast its own melancholy, meditative shadow beyond the genre, reinventing it from the footing upwardly.

Rooney Mara and Casey Affleck play a young couple in pocket-size-town Texas. Affleck is killed early on on in a motorcar crash and spends the majority of the remaining running fourth dimension under a Caspar-similar white sheet, moored to their house, unable to communicate with his partner. If y'all're expecting an arthouse Ghost, the film so boldly breaks with convention to contemplate what such isolation truly ways, subsequently moving unshackled through time and infinite to even more unsettling effect. That Lowery's story withal maintains its fragility and mystery makes it an ethereal highlight of cinema's afterlife mural; its own phantom thread.