IFC Films
'Nobody Knows' review
In Hirokazu Kore-eda's vision of childhood pathos, four children feign their non-existence to the world
By Ling Ma
Published: February 18th, 2005 | 5:54pm
From the beginning, you want to dislike a film like Nobody Knows, with its gratuitous close-up shots of cute kids doing cute kid things. But the premise is irresisitible: a young mother Keiko smuggles her children into a newly leased apartment, run by a landlord adament against leasing residences to tenants with too many children. The first scenes are serendipitously light-hearted, showing the mother jovially unpacking her kids out of suitcases and setting up house.
It is not long into the film, however, that the story's darkness creeps in and slowly takes over. The landlord lives on the premises, and none of the children, except the eldest son Akira (played by Yuya Yagira, who won Best Actor at Cannes for this role), are allowed to step out of the apartment or make disruptive noise. Neither are the children are allowed to go to school. The days and weeks drag on, and the aimlessness of the children's lives become more and more apparent, illustrated in a series of repetitive sequences. Unsurprisingly, Keiko begins to take longer and longer trips away with a boyfriend. In her absence, her children try to feud for themselves with whatever money left behind, while struggling to maintain the illusion of their own nonexistence to the landlord and the rest of the world.
Director Hirokazu Kore-eda begins with the premise of a light-hearted comedy in the clever, mischevious tradition of Home Alone and transforms the film into an uneasy, existential meditation. The transition is seamless, if in part because much of the film subtly treads both territories. Moments of silliness and the children's good-natured optimism are interspersed with subtly forboding scenes, such as when the apartment's water and electricity are shut off because the children are unable to pay the bills, or when Akira is forced to solicit the multiple fathers of his siblings for money. Inevitably, it is the latter scenes of quiet ruin and neglectance that increasingly dominate.
Along with his pacing, Kore-eda is masterly at illustrating the isolated world of his young characters, allowing his camera to patiently observe the banal details of their daily existence: finger drawings made in foggy windows, the imperfect application of nail polish. With a gentle empiricism, he highlights the pathos of his characters. At 144 minutes, Nobody Knows is overtly repetitive and at times trying, but to Kore-eda's credit, the film abstains from obvious money shots of children explicitly suffering. Instead, its length unflinchingly replicates the suspended, uneasy tension of the children's dire situation, a situation that was inspired by real life events.
Image courtesy of IFC Films
Issue #35
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