Nobody Knows

"Nobody Knows" is painful to watch. It's a story you won't shake off, depicting the most defenseless of humans -- four young children, the oldest only twelve -- trapped in growing poverty and abandonment. It's a process-narrative of devolution that makes you feel helpless and angry and sad. It's saved from mawkishness by the natural energy of the children playing the roles of the four kids. And if it survives, its not because of its treatment of a social issue so much as for its evocation of the precise details of childhood.

There are two main subjects here. One is criminal neglect: the story is loosely based on events that happened in Tokyo in 1988. The other is the private, often secret, lives of children. Koreeda began as a documentary filmmaker and this seems to have given him exceptional skill in working with people and capturing their natural reactions. The winning, tragic children in "Nobody Knows," four half-siblings with different fathers and the same childish, selfish mother, never seem to be acting and often no doubt aren't. Nonetheless the subtlety of expression in the delicate, mobile, beautiful face of the older boy, young Yûya Yagira, was such that it won him the Best Actor award at Cannes last year.

Also important is Koreeda's gift for detail, his meditative examinations of fingernails, feet, a toy piano, video games, pieces of paper, objects strewn around a room, the hundreds of little soft drink bottles that are everywhere in Japan, plants, dirt, all the small things children see because they're closer to the ground. And the things they accept because they're defenseless and innocent, but also incredibly adaptable.

Akira, who's only ten and whose voice changed during year spent making the movie, is in charge. As their mother's absences become lengthier and the children finally seem to be abandoned for good, money runs out. Akira is captain of a sinking ship, a somber duty, but he and his little sisters and brother keep finding time to laugh and play.

Koreeda's a passionately serious filmmaker: the two better known of his earlier fiction films deal with death and loss and here he considers as a given the worst of human carelessness and indifference both by society and the individual. "Maborosi" (1995) was a homage to Ozu but without Ozu's sense of social connectedness; it begins with an isolated couple in the city and chronicles a young widow's second marriage in the country through a slow pastiche of observed daily scenes where event and even dialogue are minimal concerns. The content of "Maborosi" is too thin, but the images and color are exquisite and the sequences of natural, unrehearsed-looking scenes achieve an impressively rich, beautiful, zen-like calm. "After Life" (1998) uses actual recollections of older people talking to the camera to build up a fantasy about dead souls held temporarily in a bureaucratic pre-Heaven limbo being asked to choose a single favorite memory to take with them into eternity: the effect is perplexing, thought-provoking, charming, and with great economy of means, cinematic.

"Nobody Knows" isn't as brilliant or resolved as "After Life" or as exquisitely visual as "Maborosi," but for all its rambling excessive length it delivers a quantity of undigested patient misery and joy that will evoke such noble antecedents from the classic world of cinematic humanism as Clément's "Forbidden Games," De Sica's "Bicycle Thief," and the homeless father and son living on garbage in Kurosawa's Do-des-ka-den.

What's new here though is a sense of the encompassing otherness of big modern cities and the stoicism and resiliency of childhood (and perhaps also of the Japanese personality). Keiko, the childish, weak, spoiled mother (played effectively -- we instantly hate her -- by You, who's some sort of pop star in Japan), sneaks three of her four children into the new apartment and tells them they can't go out, can't show themselves even on the balcony. (In the real event, this was largely because they were illegitimate and had no papers, but here the explanation is that their noise may get them evicted.) Only Akira can leave, and she won't let him or the others go to school. They're prisoners of their urban anonymity and of an impersonal contemporary society.

As in Andrew Berkin's "Cement Garden," the children also pretend everything's okay to escape the cruelty of the social welfare system. We watch agonizingly -- and many writers say the movie's somewhat too long; it does feel thus especially during the first hour -- but this time Koreeda's world is more direct and specific than before and there's plenty of talk. The children chatter among themselves. Eventually they go out and mix a bit by day with other children. Akira even talks to himself; he has to, because there's no adult coaching him so he must impersonate an elder adviser.

Whatever its roughness and excess, "Nobody Knows" is intense and powerful film-making. Koreeda has put his whole heart and soul into this movie and with it achieves an experience you can't shrug off. Nor will you forget the kids, especially the beautiful boy, Yûya Yagira, who may be growing inch by inch into a star even as we speak.

A mom that should not be a mom.

A kid that wanted to be a kid and is never allowed to be it.

Fantastic acting overall.

A punch in the stomach.

When we are talking about family dramas, Koreeda does it like no other.

In Tokyo, the reckless single mother Keiko (You) moves to a small apartment with her twelve years old son Akira Fukushima (Yûya Yagira) and hidden in the luggage, his siblings Kyoko (Ayu Kitaura), Shigeru (Hiei Kimura) and Yuki (Momoko Shimizu). The children have different fathers and do not have schooling, but they have a happy life with their mother. When Keiko finds a new boyfriend, she leaves the children alone, giving some money to Akira and assigning him to take care of his siblings. When the money finishes, Akira manages to find means to survive with the youngsters without power supply, gas or water at home, and with the landlord asking for the rental.

"Dare mo Shiranai" is a sensitive movie based on a true and very sad story. The performances of the children are amazing, highlighting the look of Yûya Yagira, and the drama is developed in a slow, but suitable pace. The direction is effective and the music score is absolutely adequate to the film. However, living in Rio de Janeiro, where we see homeless children begging on the streets everywhere, the terrible situation of Akira and his siblings does not impress the way it certainly does in First World countries. The abandoned children of the film have an apartment to live and food to eat, what does not happen in Third World countries, where famine children live on the streets in a sadder and unacceptable reality. The open conclusion is a little disappointing, since it does not bring any message of hope or lack of hope to the poor children. It seems that life goes on only. My vote is eight.

Title (Brazil): "Ninguém Pode Saber" ("Nobody Can Know")

This film is beautiful in its simplicity...it is at times sweet, warm, funny and always heartbreaking...it is essentially about four children surviving on their own after their mother leaves them in search of her own happiness....

The show seemingly lacks any action or any exciting moments, but i was totally absorbed during the two plus hours of the film...this is largely because of the superb performances of the adorable children, who were all really natural and likable. You just feel for them and wonder at the callousness of their mother and respective fathers. The dialogue is simple yet meaningful and through the day-to-day unraveling of the plot, one sees the contrast between the courage, maturity and innocence of children, and the selfishness and childishness of adults. The realist, documentary style of filming allows viewers to see things from the eye of the children...

a great film that will make u feel rather depressed at the end of it...not for those who do not like slowly-paced films with not much action.

Today I went to the pre-screening of "Nobody Knows," a stunningly brilliant film by director Hirokazu Koreeda who also directed the philosophical "After Life."

What if I were a 12 years old boy and left alone to take care of two younger sisters and one younger brother in a big city like Tokyo, and I have to hide them in the apartment so nobody knows about them? That's what I have been thinking when I was watching this film and how the film gets my sympathy for these children. It allows me to experience the ordeal through these children's eyes and the transcending performance by Yuya Yagira, who is the youngest actor ever won the best actor award in the history of Cannes Film Festival.

Director Koreeda allows the camera to take the time to shoot and he never rushes from one scene to the next. He let me observe, let me feel, let me be as close to these children as I possibly can, until I can no longer take it and until I am drowned by the frustration and sadness. I become as helpless as those children, because I simply can not resist the urge to help them. That makes me cry. Through out the film, Koreeda masterfully positioned his lenses to ordinary objects around these children, such as simply a finger, a hand, a stain, a foot, or four empty glasses. But through these zoomed in images, I have no trouble to "see" and "feel" what's going on in the whole picture. And it tells the story in a more profound fashion and more personal way, a story you will never forget, along with those images, sometimes, even the music.

The 12 years old boy is played by Yuya Yagira, who has a haircut like the Japanese animation character. Yagira's outstanding performance is original and remarkable, and simply unforgettable. Through him, you see a premature 12 years old boy who is acting as an adult to take care the other kids, meanwhile, he is still a 12 years old kid, who will just like other kids around his age. That's make this movie can be so hard to watch sometimes, because no matter how hard your heart is, it will be softened by watching his struggle to survive. It's hard to leave this movie with dry eyes.

There is no doubt in my mind that this is the best film I have seen this year.