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It's Hirokazu-eda's movie that is so strange, it doesn't have the sharp pictures and editing like Kurosawa Akira, the wildness full of primitive impulses like Imamura Shohei, nor the youthful atmosphere of Iwai Shunji, or Makoto Shinkai's "Your Name" With such a beautiful picture, sometimes his films don't even have a dramatic beginning and ending story - it's Hirokazu Kore-eda's movies, like a trivial and plain life, seemingly casually kneaded together.
But this kind of trivial and insipid film was sold out in less than 30 seconds at the Shanghai International Film Festival in June 2018. In the bull market, a ticket was fired for thousands of yuan. Some netizens even joked about using it. A suite in Jing'an District was exchanged for a movie ticket, and movie fans even spontaneously organized a squad against scalpers. Under such heavy pressure from the audience, the organizer could only "reluctantly" add the game.
In "The Thief's Family", it was Hirokazu Kore-eda who turned the shots aimed at the middle class in his previous films and turned to the underclass. 14 years after the release of "Nobody Knows", he returned to the reality of social criticism, not only making people look at it again When it comes to the cruelty hidden behind the warmth, it is Hirokazu Koreeda, which also makes the audience feel his insight into the dark side of Japanese society. It is no wonder that it is this kind of concern for the bottom, his calm and calm excavation of social issues, and his consistent film narrative techniques that he won the 2018 Cannes Palme d'Or and was successfully sealed in the Cannes Art Pantheon. St.
back to rough
Hirokazu Koreeda was born in Tokyo in 1962 and graduated from the Faculty of Letters of Waseda University at the age of 25. Since then, he has been going around in the film and television industry. In 1995, his first feature film "The Light of Magic" was shortlisted for the Venice International Film Festival. After the age of 35, Hirokazu Kore-eda is getting more and more filming opportunities. He has accelerated from one film in 2-3 years to one film a year after 2011. However, it has played a stable role in the artistic quality management of the film.
It is Hirokazu Kore-eda's early films, most of which reflect the real life of people at the bottom. Although the pictures are carefully constructed and meticulously crafted, the effect presented is not lacking in roughness. This roughness culminated in 2004's "Nobody Knows," a film about four unattended children who end up in tragedy, based on real social news. It was Hirokazu Kore-eda who exposed the indifference behind the warmth of modern society and modern families behind the seemingly bland daily life. This work has also become the most critical film directed by the director before 2005. He starred in his unmarked character and became the youngest actor in the history of Cannes. Although it was Hirokazu Koreeda who was already well-known in the world film circle earlier, but after this battle, he finally took advantage of the blessed land of Cannes to become a director that attracted the attention of the international media.
Since then, it was Hirokazu-eda’s films that gradually stepped out of the rough and basic social reality. On the contrary, he began to observe Japanese society more from the perspective of the middle class: whether it is the elite father in “Like Father Like Son”, or the “Air Doll” in The family of single white-collar workers, or the four-sister family living peacefully in "Haijie Diary"... It was Hirokazu Koreeda who began to focus on telling the story of middle-class Japan, which accounts for the majority of the population in the spindle-shaped structure. Although family ethics is still his constant core, the life of a middle-class family is not rich, but it is basically full and warm, which makes their story more emotional life. social criticality has declined sharply. Although he can still frequently appear on the stage of world film festivals, his sharpness has declined, and the attention and recognition he has received has also declined simultaneously. After all, that kind of tranquil style can only be chewed by East Asian audiences who are familiar with long aftertastes.
In this "Thief Family", which is represented by Hirokazu Kore-eda's successful counterattack, he has regained his old sense of roughness: a burrow deep in a concrete forest that can hardly be exposed to direct sunlight, an old man who pretended to retire Jin, a low-level family that relies on "sister" to sell her looks, and "dad" and "mother"'s precarious work to barely maintain a low-level family, a poor dormitory made up of all the marginalized people in fear all day long, and a poor family that relies on hand-in-hand to supplement the family. The family of thieves — who, despite occasional intrigue, are largely in love with each other, but as "Dad" picks up a 4-year-old girl on the way home, the secrets of this seemingly happy family are revealed. One by one pierced, and finally slipped to pieces...
This rudeness also embarrassed Japanese political circles. Generally speaking, Japanese literary and artistic figures have won international honors and will receive various awards from the government after returning to China. However, after "The Thief Family" won the Palme d'Or, the Abe government showed an intriguing silence. On June 7, Japanese Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Lin Fang, under questioning by public opinion, said that he would invite Hirokazu Koreeda, who had just won the Palme d'Or, to the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, and Culture to express his congratulations. But Hirokazu Kore-eda declined on his blog, and his reasons were full of Japanese humility: (to the effect) there are still many important matters in the country that need to be discussed and resolved urgently. The time section of the news. However, the good Le Figaro still believes that "The Thief Family" because of its performance on the poor and the bottom makes the Abe government feel that it hurts the government's international reputation, so it has not made a statement.
gentle cruelty
It is indeed Hirokazu Koreeda who has returned to critical social reality through "The Thief Family".
On the surface, the thief's family is always sitting around happily eating dinner, fighting with each other. But as the "sister" played by Matsuoka Juyu said: "It is not blood, but money that connects us." Everyone in this Burrow is not related to each other by blood; The poverty of life forced them to rely on each other to survive in this remote corner of the modern metropolis.
However, poverty does not necessarily fail to produce love: "Dad" always hopes that "Son" can call him "Dad", and "Sister" can also communicate with the heroine about the favorite boy she met when she was dating; The little girl that my brother picked up and brought home entrusted the love of the whole family - even if the "mother" insisted on sending the child back at first, when she heard the domestic violence in the little girl's mother's home, she still firmly put the child back. The baby was brought back...
However, the family is so fragile: the "son" eventually betrayed the family, and the family left him in the hospital, thinking only of running away; grandma hid stacks of private money, which were actually It was tricked from the parents of the "granddaughter"; and when the "grandmother" died, the "father" and "mother" had no respect, just thinking about how to cover up the whole thing... It was Hirokazu Koreeda who was always there After the tenderness, another knife cut through the mask of tenderness, allowing us to see the cruel reality hidden beneath it.
And the most ruthless thing is that this cruel reality is not the suffering of tears and tears; on the contrary, it has been internalized as part of the hard daily life of the people at the bottom, who are so accustomed to it that they have no time for it. Self-pity, lamenting life. In other words, this unrelated family is not without kinship, but as said in "I'm not the God of Medicine", there is only one disease in the world, that is, the disease of poverty-under the oppression of poverty, they have no more More time and energy to share the joy of family life, that is the "high-level" emotion that can be afforded by the middle-class and upper-class people who have money and leisure time. For them, wrapping the cruelty of poverty with tenderness may be the only way to confront the cold reality.
In the end, the girl who was kidnapped by the thief's family returned from the family that loved her and cared about her, but felt that she should learn to be a thief (the thief), and returned to her mother who didn't care about her joys and sorrows at all - and this is The operation mode of modern social law: blood relatives are better than true feelings, and procedural justice is greater than substantive justice. After her disappearance, the public opinion, media, government, and police seemed to care so much about the girl's fate, but when she returned to her mother, all concern disappeared, and she was left alone to play in the corridor Playing marbles and reciting the nursery rhyme that "Grandma" taught her. It was Hirokazu-eda's tenderness. It looked like a bowl of chicken soup, but it was actually a glass of poisonous wine with slow onset of medicinal properties. Behind the warmth and deliciousness, was his extremely pessimistic gaze on blood, family, and social relief.
Misery in Western Perspective and Middle Class in East Asian Civilization
It was Hirokazu Koreeda who was shortlisted for Cannes since "Distance" in 2001. In 2004, "Nobody Knows" won the Best Actor Award, which also allowed more international mainstream media to get to know this shy and humble Japanese director. Although the 2008 "Never Stop" was not shortlisted for mainstream Western film festivals, this "little relish" film caused quite a stir in the world, including East Asia and Europe. The voice of "It's Hirokazu Koeda is Yasujiro Ozu of our era" was clamoring for a while, but Hirokazu Koreeda himself said that he felt that he was closer to Naruse Miyoshio's common people movies.
However, Hirokazu-eda’s subsequent films depicting the emotional life of the middle class were relatively sweet, and Cannes even downgraded him to the second-level “Uncertainty” category. The bottom-level life photographed by Hirokazu Kore-eda actually only accounts for a very small part in Japan, where the economy is highly developed; and the middle class he will focus on later is the mainstream group in Japanese society—in the domestic box office, it is naturally more inclined From the perspective of the middle class, the box office is better and the response is stronger; but for the Europeans who wear more or less "curious" glasses in Asia and project more care for the bottom, it is obviously a more socially critical film of the common people. , it is easier to be awarded. This is also why Hirokazu Kore-eda's award-winning films at Cannes, whether it's "Nobody Knows" or "Like Father Like Son", are all depictions of Japan at the bottom. And this "Thief Family", which is full of common people's care, won the Palme d'Or in one fell swoop, and made Hirokazu Koreeda the fourth Japanese director to win this crown after Kinokasa Sadanosuke, Imamura Shohei and Kurosawa Akira. .
Just as Chen Kaige was once regarded as a national pride after winning the Palme d'Or with "Farewell My Concubine", Cannes, as a pantheon of the film industry, its recognition of Hirokazu Koreeda also made him finally complete his journey to the altar Last jump. As a country deeply influenced by Western culture, Japan's national culture extremely trusts (even blindly reveres) the Western cultural evaluation system. After its release in Japan on June 8, "The Thief Family" has achieved a box office of 4.05 billion yen, temporarily ranking fifth in the Japanese film box office market in 2018. It is also the highest domestic box office among all Hirokazu Koreeda films.
It is Hiroyuki Koreka and his films that are among the genres that are well-received in the industry. Although they are highly rated in the industry and can win awards frequently, they do not (of course, do not need to) have too dazzling box office results. The early masterpieces depicting low-level Japan are even more incompatible with the tastes of mainstream Japanese audiences, and it was not until Hirokazu Koreeda began to film middle-class life that his works improved in terms of box office and domestic influence - this also reflects the reality of the local The huge difference between the audience and the cool Cannes jury. After 2013, popular idols such as Fukuyama Masaharu and Hirose Suzu joined their films one after another. It was Hirokazu Kore-eda's box office that achieved acceptable commercial results, but most of them could only hover around the top 35 of the annual box office ("Like Father Like Son"). " once became the top ten of the annual box office, which is no small miracle). And "Deeper Than the Sea", which did not star in idol stars, even only had a box office of 340 million yen, and the annual box office ranking was actually out of the 100th (104th) - it was Hirokazu Koreeda's movie, but it has been unable to escape the dilemma of not being well received. .
However, the canonization of Cannes is the happiest and luckiest thing in life for a Japanese director who hardly shoots commercial films. The Japanese people's superstition and follow-up of the Western evaluation system brought unprecedented national attention to Hirokazu-eda, not only in terms of box office, but also in terms of personal honor and freedom of future creation. Many art film directors from all over the world belong to the type that blooms inside the walls and outside the walls. They are well-known internationally but not well-known locally - but the halo of the Palme d'Or helps the local Japanese audience to focus their attention from the comics. In the movie and Hollywood blockbuster, turn to this director who carefully observes the conditions of Japanese society and pays attention to real life.
Epilogue
It was Hirokazu Koreeda who stepped out of the middle-class world and returned to the bottom-level perspective, and did not choose the most radical and sharp critical position. Instead, he uses a dull knife to cut through the sugar coating of cruel reality. It was Hirokazu-eda who questioned the hypocrisy, numbness, and inaction in modern society like an unanswered questioner. But at the same time, Hirokazu Kore-eda is by no means the kind of film that changes the world: he maintains a cautious distance from the objects he wants to record, and he does not offer an imaginative, minimalist cheap solution—this It is his self-consciousness as a creator, and also the restraint of the director as a humble recorder, not a conceited social activist.
Hirokazu Kore-eda has already been canonized in Cannes, and there will undoubtedly be more financial support and greater creative space in the future. And his social perspective of wandering between middle-class Japan and lower-level Japan, his reflection on the ambiguous and contradictory ethical dilemma in the family, and his discussion of the contradiction and vacuum between modern social mechanisms and individual survival and destiny, I believe they will immerse us in the In addition to its plain and honest movie world, it arouses our further thinking on modern society and modern family.
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