ScreenFish

where faith and film are intertwined

Hirokazu Kore-eda

Saturday at AFI Fest 2019

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The second day of AFI Fest Presented by Audi, was another day filled with interesting and powerful films. The odd thing about being at Hollywood and Highland this year is that since the Egyptian Theater down the street isn’t being used this year, I have no reason (or desire) to descend to street level and the mass of tourists and hawkers on Hollywood Boulevard. I’m up two floors higher where I can look down from my own little world (or perhaps it’s an ivory tower).

Hirokazu Kore-eda is one of my favorite directors. His hallmark is films about relationships—especially family relationships. The Truth is his first film made outside of Japan. That gave me some worries that he might have trouble portraying a different culture, but he’s done a wonderful job. Fabienne (Catherine Deneuve), an aging actress, has just published her memoir. Her daughter Lumir (Juliette Binoche) has returned with her family (including her husband Hank [Ethan Hawke]) after many years in America to celebrate her book—but also to criticize her mother for the falsehoods about their relationship, which was pretty non-existent. A recurring line is “Memory can’t be trusted.” When Fabienne’s major domo suddenly quits after years of being taken for granted, he convinces Lumir to stay around through the next film Fabienne is making—a story of a mother and daughter who rarely see each other. It is a story of memories—real and imagined. It is also a story that delves into the parent/child relationship in the unique way Kore-eda has of exposing love that may not be what we expect.

Kazik Radwanski’s Anne at 13,000 Ft is a very up-close look at a young woman struggling to understand who she is. Anne (Deragh Campbell) is a daycare teacher in Toronto who is hardly more mature or responsible than the children she oversees. After going skydiving (a tandem jump) on a bachelorette party, she wants more than anything to get to where she can do it solo. But as we watch her at work, or in various relationships, we see not only childishness, but also perhaps a bit of bi-polar style personality problems. As the film moves along, we see her less as someone we are comfortable with and more someone we know is at a breaking point. Will skydiving give her the freedom and control she desires or will it be too much for her to handle?

In Song Without a Name (Canción Sin Nombre) from director Melina León, Georgina (Pamela Mendoza),a young indigenous woman in 1988 Peru, is lured to a clinic with the offer of free maternity care. But after she delivers her daughter, the child disappears. Itinerant clinic would steal the babies of poor women to sell for adoption abroad. The police are unresponsive, in part because the poor women are seen as worthless. (When Georgina first goes to the clinic there are children jumping rope to the chant “Singled, married, widowed, divorced. Mother or not, you are worthless.”) In desperations she turns to a journalist to investigate in hopes of having her child returned. The start black and white cinematography emphasizes the dreariness of the story and of Georgina’s life. Her life is visualized on screen by hills and stairs—she is always struggling to get anywhere, but she must persist.

Shoplifters – A Twisted Family Tale

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Winner of the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival this year, Shoplifters is a part of Hirokazu Kore-eda’s examination of family’s place within society. This is a topic he has looked at from various angles in other films, notably Like Father, Like Son; Our Little Sister; Nobody Knows; and I Wish. (I recommend them all.) He always brings a bit of a twist into the idea of family, leaving us to consider our own views.

In Shoplifters, we see what seems to be a fairly traditional family: father, mother, grandmother, a daughter on the verge of adulthood, and a young son. The family lives in near poverty conditions. The father works occasionally and the mother has a low paying job. The grandmother gets a pension. But to make ends meet, they do petty crimes, especially shoplifting. On the way home from one of their “shopping” sprees, the father Osamu and his son Aki see a five year-old girl who seems to have been abandoned. They take her home with the idea of feeding her, but mother Nobuyu notice evidence of abuse. They decide to keep the child with them. When the parents don’t report her missing for some time, it seems the decision was right.

We may think this family is immoral with its focus on theft. They justify it to themselves by saying that something that hasn’t been bought doesn’t really belong to anyone. We know that is not true, but it helps them in their difficult situation. Soon, Aki is teaching the girl how to steal. When a shopkeeper spots her, he tells Aki to not make her do that (implying that he’s been aware of Aki’s practices all along.)

But there is also a moral sense that they exhibit—especially in taking in this girl who can offer nothing in return. The love that is evident in the family is shared with this stranger who they have rescued from a dangerous place.

As with all of Kore-eda’s films, Shoplifter provides us with very human characters that are easy for us to care for. We know this family struggles and that their actions are less than admirable, but because of the love they share and the happiness they find in one another, we sense that in many ways they are a family that we would like to be a part of. But in time the family bonds are to be severely tested, and perhaps irrevocably broken. It may cause us to question not their lives, but the society that has put them in this position.

As they get used to the girl as a part of their family, they reflect a bit about the idea of picking one’s family rather than just having it be about biology. Those thoughts keep coming back as we learn just how this family came together. Soon we come to realize that Kore-eda has again brought us a family that is not as simple as we assumed. It is here that we might want to give thought about our own definition of family. The society has given us an idea of what a family should be, but is it really clear cut? In recent years, the functional definition of family has undergone many transitions. This film gives us a new perspective to consider our own idea of what it means to be a family.

Shoplifters is Japan’s official entry for Oscar consideration as Best Foreign Language Film.

Photos courtesy of Magnolia Pictures.

Tuesday at AFIFest 2018

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AFIFest 2018 Presented by Audi continues to remind me of why I like to go to festivals. It’s not just seeing lots of movies, but it is about how movies can truly push us to consider what happens in the world from various perspectives.

Vox Lux, from director Brady Corbet, is a look at celebrity. In the first half of the movie, we see Cassidy (Raffey Cassidy), a fourteen year-old survivor of a school shooting who rockets to fame after she writes a song that becomes a cultural touchstone for grief. Soon, she is making records and globetrotting in the care of her manager (Jude Law) and older sister (Stacy Martin). During that time, her Christian roots slowly erode. In the second half, Celeste (now grown and portrayed by Natalie Portman) is about to start a comeback tour. She exhibits every bad stereotype of a self-obsessed celebrity. Her life becomes even more complicated when a group of terrorists use masks from one of her music videos in a mass-shooting in Europe. We see a day of spiraling out of control. The first half is more interesting part. The film is set to open in December.

The winner of this year’s Palme d’Or at Cannes was Shoplifters by Hirokazu Kore-eda. This is the story of a group of a family of grifters. When they come upon a neglected and possibly abused little girl, they take her in, but in time their secrets all come out. Kore-eda has made a number of films that explore family life and trying to understand the nature of family (cf., Our Little Sister; Like Father, Like Son, Nobody Knows, I Wish). The concept here is if it might not be a good thing to be able to choose our families. Kore-eda is one of my favorite filmmakers. This film is set to open later this month.

Is it imperative to save life? Styx, directed by Wolfgang Fischer, asks us about our moral responsibility. When Rika (Susanne Wolff), an emergency doctor, sets off on a solo sailing vacation, she runs into a storm. The next morning, she sees not far off a derelict trawler loaded with people being smuggled from Africa. The boat is floundering and the people need help, but her 20’ boat won’t handle them. She calls for help. There are promises made of rescue, but nothing happens. She is warned to stay away. One boy manages to swim to her boat, but the effort nearly kills him. What is her responsibility? Why will no one else be responsible? The film is a metaphor for the refugee crisis in many places around the world. Who can take them in? Why won’t some countries? How does this relate to the “immigrant caravan” moving through Mexico? This was a powerful film—perhaps the most powerful I’ve seen at the festival so far.

Our Little Sister – Is Kindness What the World Needs?

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Hirokazu Kore-eda has frequently made films about families and communities and what holds them together. Often times those films have great beauty and show us how love plays out in various ways, but they usually come with a bite as well. Our Little Sister (based on the graphic novel Umimachi Diary) has all the beauty, but it has skipped the bite we may expect in dramatic films. Rather, we get a film for which I think the best descriptor is “sweet”. I don’t say that in a pejorative sense, but with a respect for what Kore-eda has accomplished in this film.

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The story revolves around a group of sisters. Three of the sisters live in the home of their deceased grandparents. Their father abandoned the family many years earlier for another woman. Their mother likewise left a few years later. Now in their twenties, Sashi, Yoshina, and Chika have a happy life. When they learn that their father has died, they travel to the countryside for his funeral and meet their teenage half-sister Suzu. They quickly bond and Sashi invites Suzu to come and live with them.

The sense of community within the film is not limited to the sisters. It included neighbors, but also those who are no longer living. Death is a presence within the film as well. There are various funerals or memorials along the way. The sisters have an altar in the house to honor their grandparents and spend reverent time there. Sachi, a nurse, is becoming interested in becoming a hospice nurse.

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This is a set up that is fraught with possibilities for conflict. Will the sisters continue to get along? Are there animosities hidden under the surface? As one neighbor tells the older sisters, “She’s the daughter of the woman who destroyed your family.” When the older girls’ mother comes for a visit, will they accept her after she abandoned them? Is Sachi’s relationship with a married man a repetition of a family pattern? As I watched the movie I kept waiting for one of these possibilities to flare up and create crisis. But I waited in vain. That is not to say the conflicts didn’t arise, but they were always met with kindness. The sisters, their mother, their neighbors don’t exactly avoid conflict, but they respond in ways that are edifying rather than destructive.

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That (along with the beautiful cinematography) is what makes the film into something “sweet”. It is a celebration of life that is lived with kindness. It recognizes that there are trials in life, but they need not overwhelm. The kindness that is manifest in the sisters and in their community does not seem forced, but rather, for them, a natural reaction to the conflicts that begin, but because of the kindness never really grow.

Kindness may strike us as a word without much strength or substance. However, the Apostle Paul included it in his list of fruits of the Spirit. When the Prophet Micah told us the three things God requires, to love kindness is included with doing justice and walking humbly with God. We may not really be used to a film that doesn’t revel in the crisis of conflict. But for those who want to spend their time seeing a world where kindness reigns, Our Little Sister is a very good alternative.

Photos courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics