Nobody Knows (2004)

A bunch of kids are left at home while their mother goes off to work. She is gone for several weeks, and then she comes back for a few days, indulging the kids with presents and funny games (or coming home drunk, encouraging her sleepy kids to eat sushi in the middle of the night). After that, she doesn't come home at all. The kids don't go to school. They are told not to leave the apartment, but of course, it's impossible to live that way, so soon enough, they venture out on adventures of their own. The arc of the film is that of tragedy,  but the film rarely leaves the kids' own world - the story is told from their point of view, immersed in their world, in their understanding, or lack of understanding.

Hirokazu Kore-eda is a director with a voice and an eye of his own. I've written about several of his films here, and they all have made an impression on me, and from them I've learnt much about the possibilities of film-making. An important aspect of Kore-eda's films is their attentiveness to how we experience the world with all of our senses - his movies evoke smells, touch and sounds. The stories he tells are situated in a Japan that is not romanticized. Street junctions and non-places are usually given a prominent role - it is often in this kind of mileu that the characthers' lives play out. This is the case here as well. The cramped, solitary, increasingly messy apartment is contrasted with the bustling world outside: streets, a grocery shop (where a kind clerk gives them something to eat now and then) and a park with real flowers and soil.

Nobody knows does not seek out the sensational. The tragedy of the story never flies in your face - what we see is rather hints of despair, loneliness and disorientation. The abandoned kids are not presented as mere victims. Instead, Kore-eda conjures up their desperate attempts to fend for themselves, to make do, to survive. Gradually, they become aware of their gruesome situation - but to an equal extent, this is a narrative about phantasy, about dreams and ways to escape. What is most striking is left for the viewer to ponder on her own: why did things turn out this way? Why did nobody intervene, why did no grown-ups acknowledge the severity and impossibility of the situation? This may be a political film about lack of responsibility, but Kore-eda chooses subdued images rather than a shrieking appeal to THIS IS A TRUE STORY!!! In this way, moralism is dodged and the film is all the more troubling as a result. Even though the camera sticks close to the kids, their small adventures or their idle moments, Kore-eda's approach is not suffocating or intrusive (he is not Ken Clark). The main character, Akira, the kid who, in being a few years older than the others, has to take care of and protect his siblings, is a character who remains quite mysterious. We see his sadness, his worries and his caring manouvres, but the director stays at a distance from him. This is not to say that the film creates no understanding of the kids. What I mean is rather that Kore-eda is not interested in an all-encompassing psychological perspective. This makes his film-making unique: he treats kids as human beings, not as stereotypes equipped with one-dimensional characteristics or a bundle of cute quirks.