Nobody Knows, a 2004 drama written, directed, produced, and edited by Hirokazu Kore-eda, is not. This is a film that pivots away from an all's-well-that-ends-well conclusion of many famous Japanese motion pictures in favor of the bitter reality of the human condition. How could it not? The film is, very regrettably, inspired by a true story known as the Sugamo child abandonment case. I also wish I could say that child abandonment is incredibly rare, but it is obviously not. There are no monsters here, but real-life consequences when normal people do discreet yet cruel things. In the first scene of this film, the young boy who serves as the main character has longish hair and a tattered shirt; this will serve as a reminder throughout much of the film's two hours and twenty minutes that these children are in for the long haul of waiting for a provider who will never show up.
In the film, Yuya Yagira plays the young boy named Akira. At the beginning of the story, Akira and his mother, Keiko (You), seem to be a normal mother-and-son pair, delighting their landlord and landlady with a gift upon their first meeting. The landlord mentions it's good that Akira is in middle school, because a lot of the other tenants complain about too many noisy young children running around the building. No problem, according to Keiko. Well, there is a problem: three other children. Two have been hidden in their luggage that soon arrives via delivery. Their names are Shigeru (Hiei Kimura), the youngest boy, and Yuki (Momoko Shimizu), the youngest girl, who is only five. Akira later goes out to pick up his other younger sister, Kyōko (Ayu Kitaura), the second oldest in the family, at the train station. Between the two of them, they handle most of the responsibilities when their mother is away. There is no father figure in the family; all of the four children have different fathers.
Why did they move? Apparently, Shigeru was too boisterous, and it's implied that they were evicted or their lease wasn't renewed. Hence, hiding two children in pieces of luggage and sending a third by herself on the train to catch up is their solution. Are Japanese children too noisy, and are Japanese adults too intolerant towards them? I lived in Japan for thirteen months, and I wouldn't say Japanese children are any more or less energetic than their counterparts in other nations. I also can't speak as to whether or not Japanese people detest loud children, but I do know that there is a website detailing the noise of children in Japanese neighborhoods, warning others of children who play too noisily or scream, and that four children is not normal in Japan, with the country recently seeing a record low birthrate of 1.26 children per family, continuing a downward trend. In recent years, the Japanese government has tried to remedy this by investing $25 billion dollars to support families who may want children. But this bill was passed late last year—surely there was less of a concern back in 2004, the year of the film's release. Unlikely, because the total fertility rate in the country then was 1.29, only slightly higher than what it currently is. What about in 1988, the year in which the terrible incident that inspired this film take place? 1.66.
It would be important to note here that Kore-eda does not make films that judge others. As he did in later films like After the Storm, the Palm d'Or-winning Shoplifters, and last year's Monster, his stories are of ordinary people caught up not necessarily in unordinary situations but those that one wishes simply did not exist. It might be impossible not to be angry at a person like Keiko, who not only later abandons her four children but in the early part of the film doesn't seem to be in much of a rush to actually get her two youngest ones out of the luggage that they themselves describe as "super hot." Not much information is explicitly revealed about her. Instead, the dialogue, how the children react around her, and You's performance fill in the gaps.
You seems to inflect an exaggerated, childish tone and pitch to her character's voice, suggesting that Keiko was never going to be mature enough to take care of four children. The children characters, though, often are tolerant towards her, perhaps because she rarely scolds them or makes them eat vegetables (or even go to school), with only two instances of them losing patience with her: when Kyōko whispers to Akira that she reeks of alcohol and when Akira finally confronts her for being selfish and not looking after them or letting them go to school. Thus, they all have to grow up very quickly. Akira, in particular, becomes the father figure, budgeting on the spot while shopping and cooking curry for the three younger ones while teaching himself math at night. One morning, though, there is a note that their mother has gone away for a while. Now, the growth of his parenting skills really needs to accelerate.
The four actors portraying the children (as well as Hanae Kan as a young school girl who frequently skips class to hang out with them) all give remarkably naturalistic performances in a way that film companies, casting directors, and directors should take note. One would be very hard-pressed to find a director who can work as well with children as Kore-eda does. Using discreetly placed cameras and providing minimal specific directions, he was able to capture the four of them naturally going about their business as any young child would. This is especially evident in the performances of Kimura and Shimizu. Yagira's performance is especially praise-worthy. For his role in the film, he became the youngest winner of the Best Actor award at the Cannes Film Festival in the festival's history. He was unable to attend, however—he was back home studying for exams.
If there is to be a message in the film, it may be a condemnation towards the conditions that resulted in such a tragedy, namely of adults' making. It's not simply the mother figure who abdicated her responsibilities, but a whole host of others who may be at fault: a child welfare system that separates siblings, a government that can't or won't help families who are financially struggling, absentee fathers, and well-meaning adults who simply look the other way. It's enough to depress the viewer, especially if they've seen the three aforementioned films from Japan, ones that celebrate the nation's abundance of color, spirit, and even superior toilets. In Nobody Knows, Kor-eda is not interested in such fairytales; it's as if his film screams in the opposite direction that things are not as perfect as they seem. But as Roger Ebert once said, no good movie is depressing; all bad movies are depressing. Nobody Knows is certainly worth a watch on its twenty anniversary, especially for its extraordinary acting.
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