The Best Films of the Zeroes: 4

4. NOBODY KNOWS. (2004)
Directed by Hirokazu Kore-eda

NOBODY KNOWS was my first exposure to Hirokazu Kore-eda. Somehow, I missed the screening at the 2004 London Film Festival, and finally caught up with it on DVD a year later. It’s a simply extraordinary film, one of the most compelling, frightening and devastating films I’ve ever seen. I’ve since seen two more of his films, STILL WALKING, released earlier this year; and AIRDOLL, which doesn’t have a release date set. I now think he’s one of the very best directors currently working, anywhere in the world. As a first exposure to him, NOBODY KNOWS is a revelation. If you’ve never seen it, I would recommend stopping reading this now, opening a new tab in your browser, going to play.com and buying the DVD.

Ok, trusting that you’ve now done that, time to explain why it’s such a great purchase, there be spoilers from here on in, but I don’t think they’ll ruin the film. NOBODY KNOWS starts by watching a single mother, Keiko, and her two children moving into a new flat in Tokyo. The most memorable shot is of them lugging a heavy suitcase up several flights of stairs. Once they’re safely ensconced, and alone, in their new home, they open the suitcase to let the two youngest children in the family out of the suitcase. It soon becomes clear that these are two children that the mother has had to hide the existence of, from her new landlord.

It’s immediately clear to us that this is a family with several problems. The mother, played by You, a Japanese pop-star, is the root of the family’s problems. She bans the children from leaving the flat, aside from Kyoko, the eldest daughter, who is permitted on the veranda to do the family’s laundry. Kyoto, just ten years old, and played by Ayu Kitaura, is close to her elder brother Akira, twelve years old, played by Yuya Yagira. In a film filled with exceptional performances, Yagira’s is the best. He won the Best Actor award at the Cannes Film Festival, and deservedly so. It’s one of the most remarkable pieces of acting that I’ve ever seen. Of course, credit should go to Kore-eda for this. Not only has he managed to elicit superb performances from all of his young cast, but the manner in which he shot the film is directly responsible.

He spent eighteen months working with Yagira, and the other three young actors. He decided not to script most of their scenes together, merely telling the actors what the situation was and choosing to film them, almost documentary-style, dealing with the problems that their characters are facing. These problems mount up, as Keiko becomes an ever-more irregular presence in the household, leaving the kids for hours, and eventually days at a time. It’s hard not to identify most with Akira, of the four kids, as his burden is the greatest. The film’s best moments feature Akira’s plight as he attempts to provide for his brother and sisters.

Akira becomes friends with a girl of the same age, who prefers to live on the street rather than her home, the implication is obvious. They spend time together, and their friendship is a clear reminder to the audience, how much the life the kids are living is starved of. When she goes off with a much older man, she returns with money, which Akira refuses. She tells him that ‘she only sung karaoke with him’, but we know that her future is going to be as bleak as can be.

In fact, we know, from the beginning, that these children are all going to be severely damaged by this experience. So even their moments of happiness are tainted by an overwhelming sadness, which builds and builds until there’s nowhere for it to go. The most innocent moments in the script, which is sweetly funny quite regularly, are given a huge amount of pathos by our understanding of their situation. The biggest kicker, though comes when we realise that Akira and Kyoto are aware that they have little or no hope either that their lives are going to get back to normal. Akira is the only one of the children who appears to have ever been schooled, and even with the responsibility of looking after his siblings he tries to study, until the only subject that he can accommodate is maths, trying desperately to stretch the family’s budget even further.

In the most memorable scene, Akira, with his mother’s money having run out, heads into the town to try and contact her. He finds a payphone, and dials a number at which he thinks he might be able to find her. He dials the number, and when it is answered, he asks for Keiko; placed on hold, Akira feeds coin after coin into the phone until his money has run out. After his last coin’s credit is gone, he gently brings his head down onto the phone, and his despair, away from his younger siblings, is plain to see. It’s a scene that tells us a lot, while doing very little, typical of the director’s minimalist style.

Kore-eda is such a quiet director, someone who has so much confidence in the story he’s telling that the direction is as subtle as can be. In this regard, he’s reminiscent of the great Yasujiro Ozu (particularly with STILL WALKING which is a neat inversion of TOKYO STORY), but also of Chinese director Tsai Ming-Liang. The film is inspired by a true story, where four young children were abandoned by their mother in a Tokyo apartment. Kore-eda has changed the story significantly, still crafting a perfect film.