The Departure – by Wendy Moscow

October 13, 2017.  The beautifully shot and meditatively lyrical documentary, “The Departure,” asks the question that all of us have asked at some point in our lives, “What makes life worth living?” The pacing of the film is slow and contemplative, as befits the vocation of the protagonist, Tokyo native and Zen priest, Ittetsu Nemoto. The director, Lana Wilson, invites us into the life of this compassionate (and self-destructive) counselor to the suicidal who cannot emotionally separate himself from his clients, and is forced to consider the meaning of his own life when confronted with a life-threatening diagnosis at 44.