Nobody Knows (Hirokazu Koreeda, 2004)

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.

The Third Murder (Hirokazu Koreeda, 2017)

The Third Murder (Hirokazu Koreeda, 2017)

Cast: Masaharu Fukuyama, Koji Yakusho, Shinnosuke Mitsushima, Mikako Ichikawa, Izumi Matsuoka, Suzu Hirose, Isao Hashizume. Screenplay: Hirokazu Koreeda. Cinematography: Mikiya Takimoto. Production design: Yohei Taneda. Film editing: Hirokazu Koreeda. Music: Ludovico Einaudi.

"The truth is rarely pure and never simple." Oscar Wilde's pronouncement could stand as an epigraph for The Third Murder, which could be just a murder mystery in which the defense attorney, Shigemori, serves as detective as well, but tries to make serious points about the relationship between truth and justice. Shigemori is faced with defending Misumi, who has apparently committed his third murder. Moreover, his trial for the first two, a double murder, was presided over by Shigemori's father, who now feels that he was too lenient in not sentencing Misumi to death that time. Shigemori's defense of Misumi is also complicated by the fact that Misumi confessed to the killing. So it seems that the best Shigemori can do is to try to get the man sentenced to life imprisonment instead of death. Things begin to get complicated when Shigemori encounters Sakie, the daughter of Misumi's victim, at the site of the murder. She is the same age, 14, as Shigemori's own daughter, from whom he has been separated by divorce and by his addiction to his work. The growing relationship between lawyer and client is visually manifested in the gradual merging of their two faces, which are reflected in the glass panel that separates them in their conferences at the prison. Shigemori is drawn much deeper into the case than he expected, and the film becomes laden (if not overburdened) with revelations about why Misumi murdered Sakie's father -- if in fact he did. It's an absorbing story, even if it doesn't quite fulfill its intellectual and moral ambitions, and the film is strengthened by beautifully subtle performances by Masaharu Fukuyama as Shigemori and Koji Yakusho as Misumi.

Shoplifters (Hirokazu Koreeda, 2018)

Shoplifters (Hirokazu Koreeda, 2018)

Cast: Lily Franky, Sakura Ando, Kirin Kiki, Mayu Matsuoka, Jyo Kairi, Miyu Sasaki. Screenplay: Hirokazu Koreeda. Cinematography: Ryuto Kondo. Production design: Keiko Mitsumatsu. Film editing: Hirokazu Koreeda. Music: Haruomi Hosono.

DNA, Hirokazu Koreeda seems to be saying, is overrated as a way of defining a family. Nothing biochemical seems to link the members of the family that Osamu (Lily Franky) and Nobuyo (Sakura Ando) have put together: waifs and strays, outcast from their biological families. Granted, Osamu and Nobuyo are criminals: He murdered her abusive husband, and they are now living on the pension Hatsue (Kirin Kiki) receives from her late ex-husband, supplementing that not only with whatever they can shoplift from stores but also with Hatsue's own larceny, pretending to the parents of Aki (Mayu Matsuoka) that she has been in touch with the young woman in Australia and receiving money from them to send to her. In fact, Aki ran away from home and now works in a peep-show, writhing erotically, though fully dressed, for patrons behind a one-way window. At some point Osamu and Nobuyo also found young Shota (Jyo Kairi) sleeping in a car and brought him home to help with the shoplifting. As the film begins, it's a cold February night and they come across little Yuri (Miyu Sasaki) shivering outside her house. When they discover bruises and burns on the little girl, signs that her parents have been abusing her, they decide to keep her, training her in their light-fingered ways. Dickens would have loved it, though he would have been forced by convention to restore law and order in a way that allowed everyone to live happily ever after. Law and order win out in Koreeda's film. Happily ever after doesn't. Great performances all around, including magical ones from the children, give Shoplifters the grounding it needs to be more than just a tearjerker.

Still Walking (Hirokazu Koreeda, 2008)

Cast: Hiroshi Abe, Yui Natsukawa, You, Kazuya Takahashi, Shohei Tanaka, Kirin Kiki, Yoshio Harada. Screenplay: Hirokazu Koreeda. Cinematography: Yutaka Yamazaki. Art direction: Toshihiro Isomi, Keiko Mitsumatsu. Film editing: Hirokazu Koreeda. Music: Gontiti.

A family gathers for an annual ritual: mourning the eldest son, who drowned 12 years earlier while saving the life of another boy. Hirokazu Koreeda's film earned the expected but appropriate comparison to Yasujiro Ozu's films that explored family tensions, as the surviving son, Ryota (Hiroshi Abe), struggles with his resentment of the parents' devotion to their dead son and their disappointment with and disapproval of the course his life has taken.