1
What is Hirokazu Koreeda the most powerful?
It is he who can photograph the daily life in a closed space with excitement and vividness.
This is hard to do.
Just imagine, if I put a camera in my house to shoot our family eating, chatting, dazed, and sleeping, I would be bored to death.
But Hirokazu Kore-eda has the ability to "turn the ordinary into the moving".
Even the abandoned children in "Nobody Knows" are not miserable under his lens, but have a unique vitality.
Watching his movies always reminds me of a sentence: life is to swallow the cruelest part and live with a smile.
It is the image of Hirokazu Kore-eda, and he can always spit out a slightly sweet aroma from the bitterness he swallowed.
Watching "The Thief Family", I was once again attracted by his vivid daily life.
This movie may not be Hirokazu Kore-eda's best work, but it must be his most complicated work.
It is like a big skewer, and it wears almost all the "family issues" that Hirokazu Kore-eda has discussed, but it is by no means simply pieced together, but organically integrated, and on each local topic, it is done differently. degree of upgrade.
This is the most enjoyable place for me as a movie fan.
2
"The Thief Family" tells a story of abandonment and acceptance.
When it comes to being abandoned, I have to mention "Nobody Knows".
In "Nobody Knows", four children abandoned by their mothers hide at home all day long, living an invisible hard life.
The film does not exaggerate the sadness, but presents the children's daily life almost plainly, and faintly conveys a sad helplessness from the crack of time.
It did not choose to criticize, but completed the most powerful criticism, pointing directly at the absence of the social assistance system.
In "The Thief Family", this lack of social assistance was unexpectedly filled in a special way.
In the film, six marginalized people who have been abandoned by their families or society gather together for warmth and form a temporary family.
They are not related by blood, but they abide by the family structure of ordinary people and live a comfortable and self-sufficient life.
It's certainly moving.
However, if you look closely, you will find that this warm family is actually full of doubts.
Each member has his own secrets and interests.
The couple, Zhi and Xindai, were charged with "manslaughter" and struggled at the bottom of the society.
On the surface, they took in Chuzhi, an elderly living alone, but in fact, the family's life depends on Chuzhi's pension to maintain.
Chue was abandoned by her son, and she joined this temporary family in exchange for a guarantee of end-of-life care.
She took in Aji, and there was a secret behind her. At the beginning, it was Aji's grandmother who took away her husband, and Hatsue asked Aji's parents for money on a monthly basis.
The little boy, Xiang Tai, is the child who was brought back by Zhi and Xindai when they stole, just to make up for the regret of being unable to have children. Strictly speaking, it is no different from abduction.
In order to maintain his life, Zhi also took Xiang Tai to steal around to supplement his family.
This utopian family is actually not as noble as imagined.
At least at first, it was more of a makeshift mutual benefit organization.
It's also easy to understand.
Just imagine, how can a few people who have just been abandoned by their native families become so easily invested in love?
Everyone is just to survive, to help each other out, and to take care of each other.
So when Tsunaji died, the family didn't cry and make a fuss, but calmly buried the body, and then continued to falsely claim the pension.
This is a kind of tacit understanding that was reached when this organization was established.
However, this kind of emotion will slowly ferment in the relationship.
Especially after the basic survival is guaranteed, the emotional role of "home" begins to emerge.
It is Hirokazu Koreeda who is particularly good at using the two situations of "seaside" and "fireworks" to remember important moments of a family.
The seaside in "The Thief's Family" is not as quiet as "Never Stop", nor is it as elegant as "Haijie Diary", but full of sunshine and vitality.
Similarly, the fireworks in "The Thief Family" are very different.
It is invisible, and the family can only stick their heads out, look up at the sky, and listen to the sound of fireworks in the distance.
Fireworks are illusory, invisible fireworks, and even more illusory in illusory.
But at that moment, the feeling of a family cuddling with each other was extraordinarily real.
This family, it is in the moments of life, that they have returned to the appearance of "home" bit by bit.
And the last piece of the puzzle in this "home" is the little girl Youli.
The special thing about Yuri is that she is just a weak victim, she cannot bring any benefits to this down-and-out family, on the contrary, she is likely to become a drag.
So, what is the premise of accepting friends?
It is the thief family who must complete a transformation of their concepts.
That is: from an organization based on the principle of "mutual benefit" to a home based on "love".
It was the appearance of Yuri that contributed to the final completion of this transformation. Of course, it can also be said that it is precisely because of this transformation that Youli may be accepted.
In any case, the thief family established the legitimacy of the family with acceptance without repayment.
The source of legitimacy is not blood, marriage, or interests, but " selfless care ."
This is the most reliable force to maintain a family.
3
It is Hirokazu Kore-eda's film, and there is a consistent motif: intergenerational relations .
Even in crime films like "The Third Suspect", it was Hirokazu Kore-eda who still didn't forget and put the intergenerational relationship into it.
In the end, it is the suspect in the film who gets along with the victim girl like a father and daughter, which prompts the lawyer to reflect on his relationship with his daughter, which seems to be more important than the truth.
Similarly, in "The Thief's Family", "intergenerational relations" is still one of the themes.
It can just be seen as a continuation of "Like Father Like Son".
The question discussed in "Like Father Like Son" borrows the question from Xindai in "The Thief's Family", that is: Does a child naturally become a parent?
This question involves the definition of the word "parents", whether it depends on "congenital blood" or "acquired upbringing".
Ideally, if the two can be one, it is the most perfect. But in reality, there is often a situation of "being born without nourishment".
The setting of "Like Father Like Son" is very clever and corresponds to this problem well.
There are two families in the film, the many family and the Xiongda family, whose children are Qingduo and Liuqing respectively.
One day, the two families suddenly received a call from the hospital and were told that the child was holding the wrong child. So they decided to switch back to their own son.
This is a correction based on "blood".
But the problem came. After Liu Qing returned to many families, because of many poor upbringing, he could not integrate into the family. He wanted to return to his former home.
On the other hand, after Qingduo returned to the Xiongda family, because Xiongda was willing to accompany the children, Qingduo integrated into the new family well.
Therefore, in the parent-child relationship shown in "Like Father Like Son", "upbringing" seems to be a more important factor than "blood relationship".
This discussion also continues in "The Thief Family".
But the answer is very helpless.
As Xindai asked: "Does it become a natural parent after giving birth to a child?"
The female police officer's answer was: "How can you be a parent if you don't have children?"
This is a social rule, a decisive judgment on this issue.
However, children do not lie.
At the end of the film, on the Mercedes-Benz bus, Xiang Tai finally silently called out "Dad". Although Zhi didn't hear it, it represented the definition of "father" in the child's heart.
After Yuri returned home, he still lived the same exile life as before. She was kept alone on the balcony, looking out through the gap between the railings and expecting someone to pick her up.
A shout, a look, has already explained everything.
When the police officer asks, "Teach your child to steal, won't your conscience be disturbed?"
Zhi replied, "But, that's the only thing I can teach him." At that time, he was helplessly distressed.
But in Xiangtai's heart, it was another scene.
In Shota's view, stealing is like swimming, fishing, building a snowman, and eating instant noodles. For him, it only means one thing: time with his father.
Whatever you do, be happy.
Only companionship is the best education.
4
From the previous article, we can see that the core of Hirokazu Kore-eda's discussion in "The Thief Family" is whether there is a possibility of family forms other than blood and marriage.
Blood is a destiny, and marriage is a contract, all with some kind of coercion.
And when a form becomes necessary, it is likely to drown out the sincerity and gradually degenerate into a formalism.
The existence of "The Thief Family" allows us to see another form of "home", even a purer form.
That is the connection between people based on selfless care and companionship.
But this family is doomed to be separated.
Because it did not conform to the rules of society from the very beginning.
On the other hand, if these people were not on the fringes of society, they would not have the opportunity to experiment with a new family style in a corner that no one knows about.
They succeeded.
But it is also doomed to fail.
Continuing the themes of "Walking On" and "Deeper Than the Sea", "The Thief Family" is also the story of a family's death.
The difference is that the separation of the family in "Never Stop" is because of the death of the parents; the separation of the family in "Deeper than the Sea" is because of the breakdown of the marriage.
It just so happens that one is about blood, the other is about marriage, and the disappearance of the two "coercive forces" leads to the demise of the family.
On the contrary, "The Thief Family" does not exist because of some kind of coercive force, but is torn apart by the coercive force of "social rules".
This is a deeper sense of helplessness.
This home is like a piece of tenderness stolen by six people.
Its most moving moments will always be fixed on that beach.
Father, mother, aunt, son, daughter, holding hands, facing the waves, laughing and dancing.
Grandma watched everything quietly and said silently, "Thank you."
Well, thank you.
This is also what everyone who has seen the movie wants to say to them.
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