🎬 #157 A Blast of Subtlety.
Apologies my friends, just one film this week but it’s really got the power of two. Sweet, innocent - beautiful and totally heartbreaking. Totally grounded and yet so powerful in a way only Koreeda can deliver.
Happy viewing
Bry
NOBODY KNOWS
2004 Dir Hirokazu Koreeda
2 hrs 21 mins
If you’ve seen any of Koreeda’s work before you’ll recognise his style. I describe him as like the modern Ozu. He captures daily life, usually in Tokyo, in such a poetic, but unpretentious way. It’s within these very everyday moments that his stories are born. He’s extracting cinema from the subtlest exchanges and actions. His stories have very clear concepts and plots but all their power is in the subtlety of their execution. In the tenderness of their editing and usually in the realism and charisma of the young actors who populate his stories.
Nobody Knows is a prime example of this. The majority of the cast is made up of child actors. And although the film is based on true events - it takes hold of the audience in its smallest moments. One thing I kept noticing in the film, is his focus on the children’s feet. Feet on concrete, on tatami mats, on wood or being slipped into shoes. It seems like such a throwaway detail but feet and shoes are a symbol of autonomy and adventure. You can’t go anywhere without your shoes on. And that’s what this film is really about, it’s about getting that taste of adult independence at far too young of an age. It’s about travelling, without going anywhere. It’s about being locked-up and unable to go anywhere. It’s an insight into how a child isn’t allowed to be a child but an adult is.
This is a really devastating film, you fall in love with all the kids, and wonder how anyone could leave them to fend for themselves. You go from laughing at the absurdity of the tactics the ragtag family uses to survive to being crushed by their disownment. It’s touching, without being saccharine, it’s a film that everyone should see.
TL;DR: Koreeda’s look at children looking after children is subtle, sweet and totally brutal.
*Available for a small rental fee on Apple in the US and Apple and Amazon in the UK.
Fact: The film was shot chronologically over almost an entire year.