Nobody Knows (2005)

Highly Overrated But Still Good

Absolutely the worst movie.

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

Japanese director Hirokazu Koreeda's 'Nobody Knows' is a contemporary drama involving a mothers struggle to cope with life with her children.The mother, Keiko, has little money and crams everyone into the tiny apartment. Akira (Yua Yagira) is the oldest child of about 12 years old, who is the only visible child to the outside world. He runs all the errands and keeps his three younger siblings fed whilst his mother works. The three children never leave the apartment, none of them go to school.Keiko spends less and less time at home, often leaving for long stretches and leaving money behind for the children to fend for themselves. Completely self-absorbed, Keiko is obsessed with her own happiness and clings to her fading youth. Eventually, she disappears completely, to live with another man.Kept in the dark for so long, Akira has no choice but to continue to act as the father, his slightly younger sister Kyoko (Ayu Kitaura) becomes the mother-figure for the youngsters Yuki (Momoko Shimizu) and Shigeru (Hiei Kimura). Apparently each child is fathered by a different man, and none have any responsibility for any of the children. The children can't even go to the authorities because they will all be split up. Its a heartbreaking situation to watch these abandoned children try and hold things together as a family, in an adult world they are ill suited to cope with, however hard they try. The tragedy is of a society which doesn't want to know, and allowed it to happen.Yagira gives a remarkable performance, a conduit for his siblings to the outside world, observing and processing everything around him in the hope that they can all survive. He wants to live life like any other child, not just to survive. He meets other children, who live the life he should be living, and desperately wants to be a part of this enticing world. Not all is as appears, when he befriends a girl of a similar age who is being bullied and spends little time at home. Hers is another story which Japanese society doesn't talk about.Koreeda doesn't just explore the children's dilemma, in a wider context we look at parenting (or lack of) and the attitudes of Japanese society towards the young. We see children wasting their lives, unloved and undetected, whether parented or not. Of course, Akira and his siblings' situation is the worst kind of abandonment where there is little hope. 'Nobody Knows' is an absorbing and moving film, a heartbreaking study of children in an adult world which remains with you long after the film is over.

I was quite disappointed with this movie, it was very slow, lacking in character arcs, plot or emotion. The abandonment and the 'fending for themselves' is interesting, but it's half shot like a documentary, half shot like a progressive drama. But there's very little to take from the film. The characters are pretty shallow, despite the great acting and close-up shots. A movie this reminded me a lot of is King Of the Hill, a fantastically made movie about a boy left to fend for himself as his parents have to leave. There's adventure, a coming-of-age character arc, a plot with strong overtones. Very strongly written characters in addition to the good cast. Obviously they're not identical films, but I would recommend King Of The Hill tenfold over this. I'm a hugely into Asian cinema, but other than good camera-work, there's very little to this film.

I really cannot believe why people like this movie. I've read comments where people are saying that this film is beautiful. Really? Someone could actually look at the suffering going on in this movie and enjoy it, let alone call it beautiful? My major fault with this movie is that is seems almost pointless. Why would anyone want to watch a group of kids suffering for 2 hours, because that pretty much sums up the whole movie. Honestly, you have to be sort of sick in the head to actually watch this film and think, "Wow, I'm so touched. I just watched these kids live incredibly miserable lives... I really enjoyed it. What a great movie." That right there basically sums up the only reason why someone would like this movie, because unlike other sad movies, this movie does not contain values to be learned or at least enjoyable scenes.So to sum it all up, I would only recommend this movie to those who enjoy watching others suffer. I, for one, don't enjoy watching others suffer, and so I give this movie a 1 out of 10.

Nobody Knows was a very touching film. I found the plot of this film is quite similar to the Japanese Animation film, The Grave Of Fireflies (1988), which I happened to watch several moths after I had watched Nobody Knows. Definitely the motives of these two films are different. While the director of Nobody Knows was inspired by the true story of abandoned children in Tokyo in 1988, The Grave Of Fireflies is based on the autobiographical novel of an author who experienced the World War II as a young boy in Japan. Nevertheless, the way these two films move audiences' hearts is almost the same in the sense that the leads in both films are all innocent children who are exposed to a tough situation without any proper protection. If you have already watched either one of these two films, I'd like to recommend the other. Because your heart would be moved the same as when you watched the other. Despite the similarity between these two films, none would diminish the level of touching impression of the other. It is just the same manner that the audience who already knows much about King Lear would still receive the fresh, strong and touching impression from the Kurosawa's Ran. Of course, in case of Nobody knows and The Grave Of Fireflies, none is the adaptation of the other. (*)