1.
"The Thieves Family" is not the first time that Hirokazu Kee mentioned a broken family and unrelated relatives in the plot. In fact, from the very beginning of his career in feature films, "family" and "maintenance of the core cohesion of the family" were the issues he was most interested in.
From the single mother who took her son to marry a brand-new family in "Phantom Light", to the four young children who were abandoned at home in "Nobody Knows", who were born in "Like a Father Like a Son" and were transferred to other countries. The two little boys who grew up in the family of relatives, and the half-sisters who were accepted into the new family in "Haijie Diary", he has been trying to examine the role of blood relationship in the family: Is the same blood line bound to establish a strong, stable, caring and loving family relationship? Or, is it possible for people to break through the boundaries of blood ties, establish family-like selfless emotions between unfamiliar men, women, and children, and take responsibility for each other from the heart and give sincerely to each other?
This is a question repeatedly raised by Hirokazu Edema in the above-mentioned film, and it is also the external expression intention of "The Thief Family". The difference is that before this, he has been using a tone that tends to be positive, positive, and harmonious. He has secretly held up non-blood relations. In ordinary families, he has a sensual atmosphere of gentle integration. However, "The Thief Family" For the first time, the non-blood relationship has led to a negative ending, using a tragic brushstroke to portray the fate of this group of strangers who have met by water.
2.
At the end of the film, we realized that the core figure who maintains this "patchwork" family is the letter generation played by Sakura Ando. It was under her active "construction" that she and Shibata were able to join the family of the old lady Hatsue and step-granddaughter Aki, and in the red car outside the billiard room, they "picked up" the baby Shanta; also It was her who stopped Shibata at the last moment and did not let him return the little girl Yuri, leaving the girl with her, and finally formed a family of men, women, young and old; of course she was still sitting in jail. Behind the glass window of the visitation room, he told him about his life experience, completely extinguishing Shibata’s last hope to continue to be a father, and at the same time, she also tried her best to maintain the "temporary family" she had previously tried to maintain. Completely disintegrated. It is precisely because of this that she is the personal creator, spiritual core and ultimate destroyer of this family.
In the final interrogation by the interrogator, we learned about her motives: she hated her biological mother, killed her husband who treated her violently in a legitimate defense, and faced the dilemma of infertility. All these external factors will She pushed to the original intention of organizing the family by non-blood relationship.
But under the arrangement of Hirokazu Ee, what she organized is actually a micro-utopia with a strong low-level social color and idealistic complex: a group of small people who make a living and enjoy themselves by stealing, deceiving, and abducting have formed a harmony. They completely isolate the existing social norms and ethics from the family of these six people, and through a kind of tacit understanding of heart-to-heart, they express their attitude of resolutely not integrating into the world around them in a gentle state of mind.
This is a six-person utopian world that seems inconspicuous, even crude and lowly, but is full of affectionate inside.
3.
Many comments focused on the moral flaws that this family showed when facing money: greed, seeing money openly, looting the sheep, stealing, and thinking that this reflects the complexity of the character's personality and the indistinguishability of good and evil.
As everyone knows, it is Hirokazu Ke who has no intention of satisfying the observer's "moral cleanliness habit" based on secular standards this time. On the contrary, he tends to learn from the method of Masahira Imamura in his films to construct low-level "maggot" characters to create a group of characters full of personality defects but strong vitality. When the water is clear, there is no fish. There is no secular character without distracting thoughts, just as there is no perfect and ideal model personality. These "maggots" at the very end of society are always struggling for a full meal. They will be timid, withdrawn or even evade in the face of threats, and their strong desire to survive makes them not let go of any opportunity to obtain material money. .
But the humbleness and moral taint of these people in the market did not prevent them from having natural, sincere and pure emotions. On the contrary, they regarded such emotions as an indispensable part of life. That's why we saw Shibata and Akita relaxing and sharing croquettes while walking in the film, and Aki put her head on her grandmother's chest and fell asleep happily, and when Shindai was threatened by a colleague to expose her "abduction" "When she was a child, she threatened to kill each other with a fierce look-in her belief, the integrity of the temporary family is an insurmountable bottom line.
It should be said that in the first half of the film, Hirokazu Kee is actually solidly idealistic: in reality, no one can really guarantee that such a group of unrelated strangers get along so well, but Hirokazu Kee is a character. The mutual empathy and affection arising from their class identities, social status and life experiences serve as the bond and foundation for them to create a moving and harmonious family atmosphere bred in the slums. He deliberately challenged the hypocrisy and indifference of the blood relationship-taking Yuri's parents' neglect and dislike of her and Aki's parents' indifference to her as examples, the reverse highlights the relationship between people who are beyond family relationships but are in the same social class. Deep emotion and love full of attachment.
If it is said that Hirokazu Ke has always been a "hard-core leftist" in ideology, then his "left" in "The Thief Family" is embodied in the denial and transcendence of blood ties, and the "class sentiment" between individuals. Full of idealized expectations and affirmations.
4.
Under the conception of Hirokazu Ee, the temporary family formed by "The Thief Family" is a solid emotional fortress. It is difficult to be directly attacked by the external world with the prevailing moral codes and codes of conduct, but it can be quietly attacked from the inside. collapse.
This weakness that can be broken is from the suspicion of "son" Xiangta. His exploration of his life experience, confusion about not being able to go to school, and distrust of Shibata's words that "the things on the shelf do not belong to anyone" have caused him to drift away from the core feelings of the family. When the owner of the small shop warned him in a gentle way not to snoop with Yuri, doubts finally broke out in the desire to find the right answer and return to the normal world.
His self-harming stealing and surrendering was the last step taken to get rid of the family's "emotional interference", and this played the prelude to the destruction of the entire temporary family, and the subsequent disintegration is no longer the family member who can prevent it with personal power. Of it.
At this moment, it was Hirokazu Ee who showed the height of his thoughts in this Cannes Palme d’Or that he had become a master: he suddenly took the film away from the superficial themes of family and blood, and extended it to a utopian sentiment. The tragic failure of idealism against the outside world.
This warm emotional fortress built by Xindai is based on complete isolation from the outside world. The family members who are "blocked" in it have to pay the price of being derailed from the normal world and unable to integrate into social life. The other five members of the family: Grandma Hatsue, Shindai, Shibata Haru, Aki, and even Yuri, a five or six-year-old girl who had just joined, all accepted and enjoyed it, with the exception of Syouta. He passively accepts the "social bondage" brought by this family, but the warm emotional bond cannot satisfy all his inner needs. He still desires to understand his true identity, and thus get rid of the humbleness of a closed life. Joining the conference brought him the external world of dignity and rich feelings. He used self-mutilation to carve out the escape cave in the wall of the emotional fortress, but this caused the collapse of the entire fortress.
Shindai, who was imprisoned for this, is more sober than Shibata, who is still immersed in the fantasy of father-son love. She finally realized that, facing a powerful and completely powerless external world, the little utopia she tried her best to maintain was an unfulfillable dream, and its destruction or being swallowed by the normal world was an inevitable fate.
So, with a very calm smile (thanks to Ando Sakura's excellent performance skills and extremely accurate grasp of the character's psychology), she told the latter one word of clues to the life experience of Xiangta, declaring the last glimmer of hope in this utopian family. Annihilation, but also a potential reminder to Shibata, who is still in love with Xiangta's wishful thinking on the side: Wake up, the dream has come to an end, and it's time to open your eyes and face this cruel world.
But Shibata was obsessed and chased after the bus that Xiangta was riding in vain, watching him go away. The car window glass divides the two into two different worlds: on one side is the obsession of expressing love while ignoring all the rules, ethics and moral boundaries, and on the other side is the indifference and alienation that must be restored after finally stepping into the normal world. The "dad" who is full of nostalgia and finally said it can only be buried in the bottom of my heart in a whisper to himself that no one knows its meaning. This is the true face of the world. In the name of justice, norms, and ethics, put out the emotions in the heart, and put the flesh and blood in the original position even without emotion (the fate of the little girl Yuri), and shape them into good Robot in operation. This is also the life that most people in the world look forward to.
5.
Different from the intention of gentleness and deliberate restraint for more than ten years, in "The Thief Family", it is Hirokazu Kee finally no longer staying in the superficial theme of family blood relationship, but showing us a few humble and weak people at the bottom with gentle affection. The posture against the short and brilliant blooming of the external world, and the tragedy of an idealistic emotional utopia collapsed helplessly under the crush of the real world.
What is admirable is that the "weapon" he uses to fight against the external social system is not the fierce frontal conflict and the organized ideological class reasoning. He chose to start from the most microscopic and delicate personal emotions of human beings, and challenged the cold and rational world that is generally solidified by behemoths with the gentleness of spring breeze and rain.
For this reason, in my opinion, this is the most well-known Cannes Palme d’Or film since 2010.
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