…The Trouble I’ve Seen
Posted on | March 20, 2005 at 2:31 pm | Comments Off
I’m giving Nobody Knows a one on the Nod-O-Meter, but I think that says more about my ability to concentrate on a movie these days than it does about how sleep-inducing this somewhat flawed movie is or is not. This is a (subtitled) Japanese movie about how four kids (brothers and sisters with the same mother but different fathers) have to survive on their own in a Tokyo apartment after the mother pretty much abandons them. At nearly two and a half hours, it’s a long movie to sit through for this type of subject matter, especially since there’s a lot of the (apparently) Japanese filmmaking tradition of having a long time go by without any dialog at all.
Visually, it at times has almost a documentary feel. The look is grainy and the cinematography is tight and almost claustrophobic. You’re seeing things pretty much from the kids’ point of view and their world is very small. Don’t expect a lot of panoramic vistas of the big city or anything. The most fascinating thing to me was that I really got to know the neighborhood that the story takes place in, seeing as how they kept showing the same landmarks over and over again, as the lead son and defacto family leader, 12-year old Akira, traipses back and forth between them (a general store, a set of outside stairs, the corner with the vending machine and pay phone, a local park where they go to get water from a fountain after the apartment’s water is turned off, etc.). I feel that I could go there and know how to get around to all those places. There’s a huge amount of detail in this movie, which makes it feel right.
The acting is good – all four kids have distinct personalities and I felt like I really got to know them. The weight of the movie falls on the shoulders of the kid who plays Akira, and he does a great job. In those moments when he gets to experience, however briefly, what it’s like to be a real kid, it’s heartbreaking. The mother is played by some popular Japanese idol singer named You (which confused me in the credits – “the mother was played by ME?”), and she does a serviceable job in an appropriately flightly role. The only other character of note is a teenage girl who enters the kid’s lives for awhile, and you get a good glimpse of the sadness in her life which makes her relate to these outcast kids, without ever fully learning her backstory.
So what was my problem with the movie? As I’ve stated before, I’m not someone who always needs a lot of closure in a film. Sometimes it works well and true when things are left ambiguous instead of the big false Hollywood ending where everything is tied up nicely and everyone lives happily ever after. I felt that this film should’ve had more closure though, especially after sitting through two and a half hours of it. It really felt to me like the ending was at a random point. I’ve noticed this in other Japanese movies too, so it doesn’t surprise me. But when I have so much invested in the characters and the story, I’d like to think that the creator has more direction in mind than just “Okay, this has gone on long enough, let’s just end it here and let the audience make up what happens next”.
And maybe the lack of closure would not have bothered me so much if it didn’t look like the film was building to something more. There’s a tragedy that happens in the last half hour or so that pretty much acts as the climax of the film, yet it and its aftermath is infuriatingly experienced at an extreme emotional distance, both for the characters in the movie and the audience watching the movie. In a way, that almost makes it comical, and it really shouldn’t be. Defenders will say that it really is not experienced at a distance, that the reason they have all those dialog-less scenes is so you can dig into the emotion underneath the surface that is obviously there, without everything being spelled out or over the top. Also, I’m sure there’s some point to be made about how numb the characters have become, and how Japanese that is and everything, but I had trouble relating to it.
So, I recommend seeing it, but know beforehand what you are in for. Don’t expect any easy answers or any finality. Maybe you’ll get more out of it than I did.
Latre.