Press: It is Hirokazu Kore-eda's "The Third Suspect" (2017), which is still closely related to his family films in addition to the breakthrough in the subject matter, and the family is still an important element of the film; on the other hand, starting from the family, this film The reference is not limited to the family.
"The Third Suspect" is an anomaly in Hirokazu Kore-eda's recent family movie universe. The film revolves around the defense of a robbery and murder case, but the final death sentence of the suspect makes the truth of the incident even more ambiguous. The scene of the story leaves the family hut and streets that can be seen everywhere in Shizhi movies, and falls into the riverside where the murder occurs, the small prison law room and the strict trial court. The characters appearing in the film are no longer parents and children who have a grudge and cannot part with each other, but an unpredictable suspect, an elite lawyer who has fallen into a mid-life crisis, and a melancholy surviving girl.
It's just that saying this movie is an outlier does not mean that it has given up on Hirokazu Kore-eda's portrayal and discussion of family issues. Quite the contrary, family remains one of the film's central issues. The most powerful evidence is that the film spends a lot of time on its three main characters to portray the families they belong to: Koji Misumi, whose young daughter was left alone for 30 years in prison for a robbery and murder case when she was young. One person, no contact since then, the daughter said, "It would be good if this kind of person died"; Shigesheng Pengzhang, middle-aged divorced, his daughter lived with his wife, he was busy with work and had no time to accompany him; Yamanaka Saki, his father was killed, and he had raped before his death Her mother noticed but pretended not to know.
It is not difficult to find that these three families actually focus on three groups of father-daughter relationships. It is Hirokazu Kore-eda's usual contrasting method to express people's emotions and relationships, as far as the two different family environments in "Like a Father, Like a Son", a child who was raised by mistake and a child who was born and alienated, as close as "The Thief's Family". Abusive Yuri's parents and the "family of thieves" who "stole" her.
The three groups of father-daughter relationships in "The Third Suspect" must have similarities as a comparison, and what they have in common is the "dereliction of duty" in the role of the father: whether it is because of work or because of imprisonment, the father who lost his "position" , let alone the father who committed the bestiality to his own daughter. And these three groups of father-daughter relationships overlapped again through the murder of Sakie's father.
Misumi was described as a "container" by the officers who arrested him that year. The loan sharks oppress the unemployed, and Sanyu, who has no personal hatred with them, chooses to commit murder. There seems to be no self in his consciousness, and he can only choose to pretend to be others. From this perspective, Misumi delusions of becoming a "God" - a "God" who can exercise the power of judgment and sanctions. And Sanyu's arrogance comes from the powerlessness to face the real "God"——
Are there people like me who play with other people's lives? If so, I would like to meet him. When I saw him, I wanted to say to him: 'It's unreasonable! '"
"Father, mother, and wife too, they all suffered misfortune and died even though they did nothing wrong! But I am still alive in this world!"
Misumi, who was ruthlessly deprived of his relatives' lives, scolded the injustice of "God" and hated the absurdity of life. It is worth mentioning that Sanyu's parents and wife are only mentioned here in the whole film, but they are the key figures in laying the foundation of the whole film. There are also three characters in the film who belong to the family but (almost) have no positive portrayal, which also plays a great role in the portrayal of the film's theme: the victim of the case, who is also the perpetrator of his daughter Saki, Yamanaka, who is only shown at the beginning of the film. The scene of being killed, and through the step-by-step exploration of the truth by lawyer Chongsheng, he complements his greedy and evil image, and then guesses the identity of Sanyu (pseudo) "Judger". Shigesheng's divorced wife did not appear from the beginning to the end, but it is not difficult to infer from the state of her daughter's flowers that she may not be a fully qualified mother. Yuka, whose parents are still alive and has a carefree life, is still in unbearable loneliness, and together with Sakie and Mitsuki's daughter, who has also never played, they are the "victims" of her parents.
Misumi, who lost his father's qualifications due to prison, made up for his lack of being a father after encountering Sakie; Sakue, who was suffering from a morbid father-daughter relationship, also gained the love from his "father" for a short time in this man. The peanut butter shared in the three corner hut, the birthday cake built on the pure white snow, the smiling face of the father and the laughter of the daughter seem to be able to purify the sins of the past. It's just that the two people who lay down at the end, one big and one small, have a cross-like body, which pierced the wonderful fantasy. Doubt about the trial and desire to kill the father is their original sin.
"Participating" in this fantastic snow game is also the lawyer Shigemori. In the "following" of the deceased's daughter, Sakie, who was in close contact with the suspect Misumi, Shigemori undoubtedly projected his daughter of the same age on her. The desire to protect his "daughter" made him finally agree to Misumi's plea of innocence. But obviously, what the film wants to portray more is the "coincidence" between Sanyu and Shigesheng. This is the inner tension that runs through the film and drives its development. The overlapping of the two occurs in two senses, one is the overlapping of fatherhood, and the other is the overlapping of views on the trial.
When facing the young lawyer at first, Shigemori once said that "for defense, understanding and resonance are not necessary"; after discovering the connection between Misumi and Saki, he tried to extract more information from Misumi's mouth, but was dismissed by Misumi as "" Compared with direct dialogue, the heat transmitted through the hands can better understand the other party" and reveal his own fatherhood; and in the search for Misumi's daughter as a witness and the investigation of Saki, outside the trial, the understanding of Misumi's fatherhood is Shigemori. What individual will cannot stop. At the same time, within the trial, the two also continuously expressed the same views on the judicial system and its system. As a result, the film successfully moved the scene from the family to the judicial system.
The overlap of Sanyu's and Shigesheng's viewpoints is first manifested in his thinking on the absurdity of life. The two said almost the same thing in succession: "It has nothing to do with their will, life is chosen." The Chinese say: Good is rewarded with good, and evil is rewarded with evil. The result is often not so. And the law is one of the tools that human beings have invented to fight the absurd. Use the law to protect the good and protect life; use the law to punish the evil and end life. Judgment is the right granted by the people to the judge, which symbolizes the will of the vast majority of people. The judge represents the people as "God" and confronts the absurd with "justice".
The two who recognize the absurdity of life stand on the opposite side of the judicial system. Sanyu is the destroyer of the judicial system, while Shigesheng is the supporter of the judicial system, that is, "your side" in Sanyu's mouth. The disagreement between the two begins when Misumi confronts the absurd with his own judgment rather than that of the law. Sanyu said to Shigemori:
If you see some things over there, you will pretend not to see it, right? "
The previous (being) trial experience made Misumi realize that the judicial system does not always aim at justice. In a real trial, it may appear that if there is no reimbursement, the search for a plea witness is given up, the first consideration is to reduce the sentence regardless of the facts, and the trial procedure can be forcibly given up in order to complete the target and save money. As Misumi's defense lawyer Shigesheng, under the will of Misumi and himself to protect Saki, he gave up the pursuit of truth and achieved the "justice" of the trial system with Misumi's death sentence, and together with Misumi became the actual judge , which also allowed Sakie to verify what Sanyu said "no one is telling the truth here". The judicial system itself is also dyed with absurd colors. The Japanese name of the film is "Three Degrees of Murder", which literally translates as "the third murder". The first two refer to the two murders of Mizu, and the third murder is the "killing" from the law:
... Killing it doesn't solve all problems, does it? "
"Isn't Mr. Shigemori just solving the problem like this?"
"Are you talking about the death penalty?"
It is naturally extreme and wrong to examine Sanyu's view from the perspective of modern civilization. Although the judicial system has alienated in the execution of "procedures" by "people", it is still the most effective tool to maintain social stability, reflect the dignity of life and fight against absurdity. And private trials, no matter what the reasons behind them, are just passive resistance to judicial justice, which can hardly conceal the nature of their inability to resolve the absurd. It was Hirokazu Koreeda who once said when describing his movie "Nobody Knows":
…I don’t want to discuss who is right or wrong, or how adults should treat children, how the laws around children should be changed, etc. The so-called criticism, lessons and suggestions are not what I want to talk about. What I really want to do is talk about the daily lives of the children and watch them and listen to them. In this way, the children's words are no longer monologues, but dialogues. Likewise, children watch us through their eyes. "("Things I Was Thinking While Filming")
It can be reasonably inferred that what Hirokazu Kore-eda wanted to do in "The Third Suspect" was definitely not to make some kind of anarchist proposition by criticizing the judicial system. The story of the people in the system, no matter which side they are on. Through their dialogue, observe us, in the confrontation between the absurdity of life and the justice of judgment. Therefore, even if Shigemori later said the same thing as Misumi, "It is natural for people like Sakue's father to be killed", this change should not be regarded as the director's attitude, but should be considered within the scope of the work. .
In addition to direct language expression, the film also uses symbolism and photographic techniques to express the "coincidence" of Misumi and Shigemori.
In the setting of the story, both Misumi and Shigemori were born in Hokkaido (the university that Saki wanted to apply for was also Hokkaido University). After Shigesheng learned that his daughter's fish had died, he told her, "I need to build a tomb to send them away." Sanyu also built a tomb for his dead bird. However, due to Misumi's challenge to the judge (playing with his life), his bird killed himself based on the judgment that the bird could not survive on his own after he was imprisoned. But he deliberately let one go. Can it survive? Perhaps the bird released by Misumi can be regarded as a symbol of Saki. Can a girl who was hurt by her close relatives too early to realize that the justice of the trial is not enough can survive alone in this world? Probably Misumi also hopes that the bird and Sakie can find a way to survive.
The "overlap" in photography is also a unique point of the film. The glass separating the suspect from the lawyer is a better prop than a mirror in a prison courtroom. Through its reflection and transmission, the camera can simultaneously capture the expressions and movements of two people talking face-to-face. With the continuous display of the overlapping identities and viewpoints of the two, the images of the two on the glass gradually realized the overlapping in the physical sense. When the decision to plead not guilty was reached in the middle of the night, the camera was shot perpendicular to the side of the glass plate to blur the glass plate. There was almost no separation between the two and they became "accomplices". "In one of the conversations, the overlapping of the images of the two almost caused the audience to get goosebumps.
Even so, the truth in Sanyu's mouth in the end is still chaotic. Even if the audience can almost judge what the facts are, they can't be 100% sure. However, as I said before, the justice of the trial is alienated in the execution, and the truth cannot always be found in reality, and the film might as well hide the truth. "Even father and son can't understand each other, let alone other people's business." Shigemori's father's words point to the window paper between Hirokazu Kore-eda's home movie and this film. It's better to cut a beautiful montage and let the "reigners" who are standing at the crossroads of the judicial system think about how to move forward.
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