Shoplifters

Dir: Hirokazu Kore-eda

2018

*****

Hirokazu Kore-eda is one of the greatest writer/directors working today. Not only are his films masterpieces but he produces one once a year, or as near as damn it, and has done for over a decade. He wrote the screenplay for Shoplifters while contemplating what makes a family, with his earlier film Like Father, like Son in mind. He has said that Shoplifters was ten years in the making. He has described it as his socially conscious film and he did not want the perspective to be from only a few individual characters, but to capture the family within the society, a wide point of view in the vein of his 2004 modern classic Nobody Knows. He set his story in Tokyo and was also influenced by the Japanese Recession, including media reports of how people lived in poverty and depended on shoplifting. The film starts as we see Osamu, a laborer forced to leave his job after twisting his ankle, teaching his son Shota how to shoplift without raising suspicion. Father and son live in poverty in a tiny house they share with Osamu’s wife Nobuyo, who works for an industrial laundry service, Aki, who works at a hostess club and Hatsue, an elderly woman who owns the home and supports the group with her deceased husband's pension. Osamu and Shota shoplift goods using a system of hand signals to communicate. Osamu teaches Shota it is fine to steal things that have not been sold, as they do not belong to anyone. One especially cold night, they see Yuri, a neighborhood girl they regularly observe locked out on an apartment balcony. They bring her to their home, intending to only have her stay for dinner, but choose not to return her after finding evidence of abuse. Yuri bonds with her new family and is soon taught to shoplift by Osamu and Shota. Osamu urges Shota to see him as his father and Yuri as his sister, but Shota is reluctant to do so. The family learns on television that police are investigating Yuri's disappearance so they decide to cut her hair, burn her old clothes and call her Lin. Hatsue visits her husband's son from his second marriage, from whom she regularly receives money. The son and his wife are Aki's parents, who believe that their daughter is living in Australia. The family visits the beach and Hatsue expresses contentment that she will not die a lonely death. At home, she dies in her sleep. Things then get a little mysterious as Osamu and Nobuyo bury her under the house and continue to collect her pension without reporting her death. Later, Osamu steals a purse from a car which makes Shota uneasy, feeling this theft breaks their moral code. Shota recalls joining the family after Osamu and Nobuyo found him in a locked car, he isn’t their real son after all. Increasingly guilt-ridden about teaching Yuri to steal, Shota interrupts her theft by stealing fruit from a grocery store in view of the staff. Cornered, he jumps from a bridge and breaks his leg. Shota is hospitalized and detained. Osamu and Nobuyo attract the attention of the police and are caught after attempting to flee with Yuri and Aki. The authorities discover Yuri and the death of Hatsue and tell Shota that the family was going to abandon him. They inform Aki that Osamu and Nobuyo previously killed Nobuyo's abusive husband in a crime of passion and that Hatsue was receiving money from Aki's parents. Nobuyo takes the blame for the crimes and is sentenced to prison and Shota is placed in an orphanage. Osamu and Shota visit Nobuyo in prison, who gives Shota details of the car they found him in so he can search for his birth parents. Shota stays overnight with Osamu against the orphanage's rules. Osamu confirms that the family intended to abandon him and that he can no longer be his father. The next morning, as he is about to depart, Shota reveals that he allowed himself to be caught and calls Osamu "Dad" for the first time after many attempts by Osamu to get him to call him it. Yuri is returned to her birth parents who continue to neglect her. On the balcony, she looks out over the city. It’s a beautifully poignant story that explores the balance between right and wrong and how good people can also be guilty of crime. Hirokazu Kore-eda has a distinct and alternative way at looking at the world that is quite striking and is very appealing to me. It’s never matter of fact and issues are examined with fairness. Many of his films seem to be about one thing and turn out to be about another and he does it such a poetic manner. Like Father, like Son might have been a more challenging film in terms of ethics within a family unit but Shoplifting really appeals to a wider issue, that of survival, group mentality and what makes a family in a broader manner. The unexpected twist didn’t dilute the tenderness of the story in anyway either which I think would have been the case had another director handled it. It has got to a point now where Hirokazu Kore-eda has developed a distinct style, not visually but in regards to structure, tone, narrative and character development. I consider him the Yasujiro Ozu of our time.