Nobody Knows (Dare mo shiranai)

Hi aki,

Tonight we watched Nobody Knows a 2004 movie directed by Hirokazu Koreeda. Original title comes up at imdb.com as Dare mo shiranai.

Very effective, though long, film. I think it’s too long, but the length works both to make me meditate on what’s unfolding, as well as to make the process seem endless.

A mom who’s a bit weak, leaves her four kids alone in the apartment, and goes off with her boyfriend. The eldest child, Akira, is only 12, but he has to take care of the others. Because the mom also told the landlord it was just her and Akira, none of the kids can go to school or even leave the apartment. Months after mom is gone, though, they all start going out. They need to; The gas and electricity and water have all been turned off.

Finally the youngest, little Yuki, dies in an accident. Akira and Saki, a neighborhood girl, take the body to haneda and bury it there. Life goes on for the survivors. The conclusion to the story would naturally be the discovery by the authorities, charges against the mother, the kids in foster or group homes or whatever they do to such kids in Japan, and finally getting into school and some sort of future. But that conclusion is withheld from us. This is less satisfying but more powerful.

The director shoots in a documentary style, and gets good performances from the kids. They are practically the whole cast. The camera is almost always static, and almost every transition is a straight cut; The only expressionistic scenes involve dead Yuki, first on her birthday when she makes Akira take her to the train station to greet mom – who doesn’t show up of course – and for awhile Akira and Yuki stand below the monorail and he promises her one day he’ll take her to see the airplanes; then near the end as Akira has a fantasy or memory of walking with Yuki down the street, and she’s still alive. (Supposedly Koreeda oroginally planned to end with a fantasy of the whole family, mom and dad and all four kids, united in a sort of heaven, or at least happy household).

Lots of the film is shot and cut in a doc style with closeups, and cutaways, and offhand compositions. These telling details convey a lot and build, taking some pressure off the kids to perform. Every effort is made to keep away from big emotions, everything is lowkey, normal, everyday. In part this makes it so real, so haunting, so believable.

Do you remember the true case this was based on? I remember something like it in the news, but it was only a few years ago, and one of the comments on imdb.com said that Koreeda worked on the screenplay for 15 years – that would push back the incident to late 1980s. Or were there more than one such incident in Japan?

Of course it’s hard to talk about such a movie without talking about the wider social implications of the story – how could mom do this, how could the kids live without being detected, what kind of a world do we live in? but I’m only talking about the movie.

(27 March 2009)

PS — to read Aki's translation of this post in Japanese, click here.