departure vs departures

[Phoo]

The Japanese film, "Okuri-bito" or Sender or leave-taker, is
the winner of the Best Foreign Language Film for the 81st Academy Awards.
The story is about an unemployed cellist,
who finds work as a "nokanshi," or ceremonial preparer of corpses.

The English title is "Departures".

When I checked the word "departure",
in my dictionary, it says that the word is
usually considered as mass noun thus uncountable noun.
So I am wondering why an plural noun, "Departures"
was used as the English title instead of "Departure".

Could you explain about this "-s"?

Thanks!!

[AmYankee]

Hi Phoo

The word "departure" is often used in the plural form. It's not at all unusual. If you look at the Cambridge Dictionary, you'll see that it can be used both countably and uncountably. I would say that you will find the plural form most often used when the reference is to physical acts of leaving a place. You might ask, for example, how many daily departures for London there are from JFK Airport. In this case, you would actually be asking how many planes leave for London every day.

In the context you mention, the word departures may well refer to individual people departing from life (people who have died). There might also be a double meaning intended in that work in a morgue (or funeral home) is quite a departure (an extreme change or very different) from work as a cellist.

All the best!
Amy
________________
ESL teacher, translator, native speaker of American English and author of more than 8000 posts here.

[Phoo]

Thank you, Amy.

You say that sometimes "departure" is countable and sometimes it is not.
I want to know when or what kind of situatin, "departure" is uncountable?

Now please look at the sentense below.
In thins sentense, I don't know why "departue point" shouldn't be read "a departure point".

"This scanner brings up up-to-the-minute late availability vacations in order of price, in order of destination, departure point, accommodation, duration. "

[AmYankee]

Hi Phoo

You might define the word exodus using the word departure collectively, for example:

- An exodus is the departure of a large number of people from one place.

[Phoo]

Well, I'm still not sure about it.
Let me go back to the first question about the English title "Departures" again.

What if... the title was "Departure" not "Departures",
would it change the meaning or any implications for the movie?

[Alan]

Hi Phoo,

The use of 'Departure' as the film title would indicate that this 'leave taking' was considered in an abstract sense or indeed as a mass procedure whereas in the plural you are referring to a number of/a series of individual 'leave takings.'

Alan
_________________
English as a Second Language
You can read my ESL story Good Bye Summer