Its been a while since I've been to a movie festival. Skipped the Japanese Film Festival Last Year cause I was too lazy and was busy with JLPT study, but when I found out about Koreeda Hirokazu's latest movie was coming to the Melbourne International Film Festival, I knew I could not miss out on this.
Shoplifter feels like Koreeda taking his experience of making Nobody Knows about abandoned kids and infusing it with the warmth of his family movies like Like father, like son and Our Little Sister.
Koreeda takes you on this journey with this family of thieves who take in this abused little girl who they later named Yuri. They are a family that does bad things, albeit in order to survive and little by little we learn the backgrounds of the characters in this family and their complicated relationships and most of all, we learn to love them as human beings, flaws and all.
After watching Koreeda movies for so many years, shoplifter feels like Koreeda's magnum opus. Its the movie with everything that he wants to say about how people can and cannot choose their families, how giving birth does not make one a mother and how bad people are capable of doing good and bad things at the same time.
I have no idea how to review this movie except to say its a movie about being human. Absolutely must watch. Be careful as you will get attacked by onion ninjas when watching this movie especially the scene in front of the burning drum.
If Lily Franky and Ando Sakura don't win all the acting awards, there is no justice in this world. Manbiki Kazoku is still showing in Japanese cinemas so it will be a while before its available on the internet so your best best to catch it is a movie festival near you or go to Japan.
That scene towards the end with Ando Sakura was so powerful, the ninja onions came in full force. The kids did very well too.
ReplyDelete@junny Also love the scene where the shopkeeper told Shota not to make his sister do it. So pivotal but so simple. Happy someone else has also seen this masterpiece!
ReplyDeleteAndo Sakura is such a great actress. She is so magnetic on screen.
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