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Rating: Why did you teach the children to steal?
Well... because I had nothing else to teach them.
Is it right to steal? What is a family? Is giving birth enough to be a mother? These are the essential questions that seek answers in Kore'eda's latest work. A conceptual density that breathes in the bittersweet lightness of a refined cinematic vision, almost painterly in its ability to hold many personalities in directorially static frames, with fixed shots that wonderfully exploit the depth of field, placing the members of a very particular family on staggered and complementary planes.
A family made of reticence and bitter truths spoken with a smile, of affection and humble meals joyfully and greedily consumed in the cramped spaces of a dive that nevertheless emanates a unique human warmth. No one has a linear relationship with the others, to the extent that the names, mom, dad, brother, struggle to come out of the cautious mouths of these cheerful derelicts. When they do arrive, they sanction in a crystal-clear way a path of feelings that is anything but trivial. Everything must be considered, every mechanism must surpass the hurdles of individual will and a daily life always pragmatically complex.
But Kore'eda's family of splendid desperates is not just made of ideal kinships, constructed of emotional clouds rather than streams of blood. The family nucleus of Osamu (who is the head of the family only in theory) travels on entirely different moral tracks, because the necessity of bread is stronger than any moralistic squeamishness. Bread is an inescapable condition, and therefore stealing is fine, because “goods displayed in a store belong to no one (at least until bankruptcy),” showing a bit of cleavage is fine if there's no better job. Kidnapping a little girl from her family is not so wrong, in this view, if her parents mistreated her. It's to make her feel better, and then “if we don't ask for ransom, it's not kidnapping.”
This naive view of the world is almost moving, because it dismantles many dogmas not due to a moral decay from excessive prosperity. It's a search for good even in everyday hell, trying to cushion the blows of life, which are many, and there isn't enough strength to confront them head-on. Traveling on eclectic moral tracks is not a luxury, it's an imposition granted by the state of things. On the other hand, the family at the center of the scene possesses a rigor of feelings inversely proportional to its respect for laws and decorum (but even in the shamelessness of selling one's body there is a filigree of exquisite humanity, because not all clients are alike and even there feelings can be born, even just holding a man's head on one's lap, in a consolatory cuddle that gropes in the pitch darkness of existence, drowning in black, but also trying to come up for air for a few seconds, just like that, with little). Staying together because you want to, to support each other and hug in a warm embrace, almost imposed by the confined spaces of the house, but actually stronger even than selfishness.
And selfishness is not a trivial theme. Because everyone thinks a little for themselves, always. Feelings themselves are about giving and receiving, and money obviously is no different. But no one imposes anything on others because there is no institutional bond. One can only hope others will continue to want to be there, to share their resources, human and economic. Grandma's pension, the sweets stolen by Shota, the goods stolen and resold by Osamu. Hunger is no trivial matter, it is no less burdensome than feelings. The small work dramas of each one are approached and embraced with the same lightness (a soaring above the void, before crashing down) that characterizes human relationships. A levity born of the freedom of choice.
The visual language, all built with fixed (or almost, there are some dashes in 400 Blows style) shots, is an essential component for the success of the existential portrait (see further). The family is often seen as a puzzle of figures fitting together with great harmony, magnificently exploiting the scenic spaces. And the words do the same. A script that flies on the wings of lightness and reticence but casts multiple shadows, always touched upon but persistent. All the dark sides of this scenario are outlined with precision, never dwelling on the trivial, hinting or suggesting to the viewer what often even the characters do not know. Only in the end do many aspects become clear, but by that point it hardly matters how Shota came under Osamu's wing, how Yuri arrived within those four walls, what ties granny to Aki. What counts is the undeniable fact of affections. They ask for no justifications and have no history. They decline only in the present.
The style of writing perfectly represents this fundamental distinction. Things are hinted at, said and not said, because in any case they matter less than feelings, than warm hugs. And so even the most feral news cannot scratch a collective feeling so strong; they are two incompatible dimensions.
[From here onwards, some plot developments can be spotted]
There is a negative counterpoint awaiting all this, and it's easy to imagine it. Yet it's extraordinary how Kore'eda leads his audience to understand and make their own the moral and existential "deviations" of these six human beings. The vision is so immersive that when you exit it, it's the world we can conveniently call “normal” that feels disorienting. Law, morality, institutions are inflexible and irrefutable, but they unknowingly sacrifice the human aspect of everything. They don't even contemplate the possibility of choice, the path deviating from the straight and alienating one of public opinion, social workers, and journalists. Justice does its duty, puts things “in order,” but what is the human result, invisible to the eyes of the State? Five unhappy people, imprisoned, alone, disappointed, forced not to see each other anymore.
8.5/10
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