‘Nobody Knows’ simply captivating
Published 9:00 pm Thursday, March 10, 2005
A beautiful film that instantly joins the ranks of great movies about children, “Nobody Knows” is a completely original experience. To hear its grave subject matter is to be misled about what it’s like to actually watch the film.
| Beautiful: A look at a family of four kids abandoned by their mother in a Tokyo apartment. The oldest, a 12-year-old, must tend their needs as the months go by. Director Hirokazu Kore-eda captures the childhood imagination and a magical sense of time passing. (In Japanese, with English subtitles.)
Rated: PG-13 rating is for subject matter. Now showing: Varsity. |
The subject is this: a real case from 1988 about a Tokyo mother who left her four children to fend for themselves in an apartment while she went to another city for six months.
Director Hirokazu Kore-eda took this idea and fictionalized it, bringing his own imagination to the situation. His film is told entirely from the point of view of the children, and it’s free of editorializing.
We meet the family as they move into the small apartment. The mother smuggles in the three youngest children in suitcases, not wanting to pay extra for rent. (The mother is given an amazing performance by a TV personality named You, who manages to seem more childlike than the children.)
After a few weeks, she leaves for Osaka to be with a boyfriend. The eldest child, 12-year-old Akira (Yuya Yagira), is in charge. When the mother doesn’t return after a couple of weeks, Akira must find original ways of feeding his siblings and maintaining the family unit.
Initially, the three younger kids are forbidden to leave the apartment, for fear of alerting the landlord. As the seasons change, they venture out to play and explore. Although their clothes are getting ragged and the water is eventually shut off, the kids experience a weird kind of freedom.
It is hard to tell how long this idyll lasts – the movie plays tricks with your sense of time passing. Kore-eda does a remarkable job of capturing the sense of childhood time, the free flow of never-ending afternoons and agelessness. Kore-eda’s drifting, often handheld visual style is perfectly complemented by the unobtrusive music of Japanese guitar duo Gontiti.
In fact, the movie is probably too long at 141 minutes. Yet I never felt restless or bored, so involving are the actions of the kids. The somewhat shapeless middle section is necessary to convey the dreamlike atmosphere.
The performances of the children are flawless, and Yagira won the best actor prize at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival for his lead role. Ayu Kitaura is the studious oldest daughter (despite the fact that these unacknowledged kids do not attend school), Hiei Kimura is delightful as the hyper little brother, and Momoko Shimizu is heartbreaking as the youngest girl.
Kore-eda has made some good movies before: “Maborosi” was an intense study of grief, and “After Life,” a movie about people waiting around in a halfway house after death, was an international hit. But he hasn’t made a film quite like this one, and nobody else has, either.
