Nobody Knows (Hirokazu Koreeda, 2004)
Cast: Yuya Yagira, Ayu Kitaura, Hiei Kimura, Mamoko Shimizu, Hanae Kan, You, Kazuyoshi Kushida, Yukiko Okamoto, Sei Hiraizumi, Ryo Kase, Takako Tate, Yuichi Kimura, Ken'ichi Endo, Susumu Terajima. Screenplay: Hirokazu Koreeda. Cinematography: Yutaka Yamazaki. Production design: Toshihiro Isomi, Keiko Mitsumatsu. Film editing: Hirokazu Koreeda. Music: Gontiti.
Like his Shoplifters (2018), Hirokazu Koreeda's film is about a family in crisis. Not a dysfunctional family in the usual sense -- the families in both films function fairly well until the crisis -- but families that function despite not exactly being families. The one in Nobody Knows consists entirely of four children, ages 5 to 12. When the film starts there is a fifth member, their mother, but she's still a child herself, so hedonistic and irresponsible that she abandons them, leaving the oldest, Akira, in charge of his four siblings -- or rather half-siblings, since each of them has a different father. How Akira and the others managed to develop enough maturity and self-control to survive on their own in a Tokyo apartment is one of the unsolved mysteries of the film, but we somehow never question it as we live through the better part of a year with them. That's partly because Koreeda maintains a child's-eye view throughout the film, treating their efforts to stay together at all costs as an essential. We may sometimes think they'd be better off if the authorities learned about their situation, that they then might get the schooling and nutrition they deserve to become functioning adults. But when a friend suggests that they go to social services or the police, Akira rejects it out of hand: They would be separated, he says. It happened once before and it was a big mess. Togetherness is all. Eventually, the worst happens, but even then they take it in stride, and as the film ends the remaining children stay together somehow. Nobody Knows is a tearjerker and a heartbreaker, but it's also a tribute to the will to survive, made powerful by the remarkable performances of the very young actors, especially Yuya Yagira as Akira, who was 14 when he won the best actor award at Cannes -- the youngest person ever to do so.