The Famous Japanese Director is Hirokazu Kore-eda's Korean film "Broker", which tells the story of three marginalized characters who happen because of an "abandoned baby", and is still the director's "parent-child relationship in an abnormal coupled family" and the iconic flowing narrative. After the film was recently released on streaming media, it received a lot of criticism such as "repetitive themes" and "not satisfied when directing non-Japanese films again". This kind of criticism has emerged since Kore-eda's 2019 French-language film The Truth.
Once again, the director faces the obstacle of unfamiliar context
During the epidemic period, photographer Hiroshi Yamazaki, who has collaborated with Hirokazu Kore-eda on many works such as "Nobody Knows" and "Non-Stop Walking", recommended a Korean drama "My Uncle" (2018) to Kore-eda. After Kore-eda watched it, he was completely attracted to the heroine of the play, Lee Chi-eun. Since then, Lee Chi-eun has become the only actor in Kore-eda's mind who is suitable for the role of So Young.
In November 2020, Kore-eda had just completed the first draft of the script for Broker. At the time, the project had been in development for almost 5 years. The director spent a lot of time thinking about the role, and there were already three Korean actors in his mind: Song Kang-ho, Kang Dong-won and Lee Ji-eun.
Sang Hyun, played by Song Kang-ho, and Dong Soo, played by Kang Dong-won, take a baby boy from the baby box and prepare to sell it. The next day, the baby boy's mother, Su Ying, came to the door, originally planned to call the police, and then decided to join them to help the child find new parents, and several people formed a temporary family and began to embark on an unknown journey.
Lee Chi-eun, Jiang Dong-won and Song Kang-ho form a temporary family in the film.
Broker is Kore-eda's second non-Japanese film to be directed after Kore-eda's 2019 French-language film The Truth.
In fact, from "The Truth", the audience can feel that Kore-eda is dissatisfied with directing non-Japanese films. In addition to finding some shadows of the director's past in the family theme, there is not much of the director's personal style in the film.
Although art knows no borders, language is sometimes an insurmountable barrier. When filming in France, it became very difficult to modify anything because of the language barrier. However, what was more challenging than the actual shooting was the editing. Because he did not understand the grammar and rhythm of French, despite the help of skilled translators, it was difficult for the director to know where to start, which made post-editing very torturous.
In "The Broker", the audience can also see that Kore-eda is in a strange context, although cloaked in a Kore-eda-style family story shell, but the sharp edge of the work is gone, leaving only a piece of warmth.
Fans call "Broker" a "low-end version" of "Thief Family"
"The Broker" can be combined with "Like a Father Like a Son" (2013) and "Thief Family" (2018) is Hirokazu Kore-eda's "Even Family" trilogy.
"Like a Father Like a Son," which won the 2013 Cannes Film Festival Jury Prize, tells the story of two families who suddenly learn that their 6-year-old son was mistakenly held in the hospital when he was born, and are caught in a family ethics dilemma. When the director hirokazu Kore-eda did preliminary research for the film, he learned that there is a hospital in Japan that operates a baby box, and after parents give birth to a child, if they are not willing to raise it, they can put the child in the baby box and adopt it by the government or individuals. Baby boxes are common in Japan and Korea and are usually placed outside hospitals or churches.
Kore-eda found that far more babies were sent to baby boxes in Korea than in Japan. In 2015, it was Kore-eda who started thinking about making a movie about baby boxes in South Korea and getting in touch with some Korean actors.
The stories of the two films," "The Broker" and "Family of Thieves," were conceived almost at the same time by Kore-eda, and even the stories of the two films are similar: a group of socially excluded people, even criminals, who come together for a period of time to form an unconventional family. Kore-eda and himself admit that the two films are sisters. But in the eyes of some fans, "Broker" is repeating the story of "Thief Family", and even a "low-end version" of "Thief Family".
Both Kore-eda and himself admit that the two films ,Family of Thieves (pictured left) and Broker are sisters.
When Kore-eda was doing research on Father As Son, his understanding of parenthood was that when women have children, they naturally become a mother, while men seem to need certain steps and processes to truly accept the reality of being a father. However, a female friend of Kore-eda later said to him: "No, the same is true for women, and the fact that a woman gives birth to a child does not mean that she is automatically endowed with the nature of a mother, thinking that motherhood is innate and a male prejudice." ”
This incident reminds Kore-eda of the anecdote that South Korean director Lee Cang-dong's "Green Trilogy" ("Green Fish", "Mints", "Oasis") was criticized by film critics for objectifying women and making women the redeemers and extraditors of men, and shutting himself up at home for seven days to reflect deeply.
Therefore, Kore-eda also made a deep reflection. In "Thief Family", Sakura Ando plays Shibata Nobuyo, who tries to be the mother of the children although she has no children herself. In "Broker", Su Ying, played by Li Zhien, although she gave birth to a baby, she was not ready to raise it. These two almost opposing "mother" characters appear in Kore-eda's mind at the same time, and the director even imagines the two women as sisters.
From the perspective of the whole creation, "Like a Father Like a Son", "Thief Family" and "Broker" are indeed related, they are all stories about abandoned children. Even earlier, it dates back to 2004 with Hirokazu Kore-eda's masterpiece "Nobody Knows", which tells the story of a single-parent family in Tokyo, where four siblings are abandoned by their mother and live alone.
Some deliberate bright scenes are actually very "discouraged"
During the script writing phase of Broker, kore-eda often heard stories of children abandoned in their baby boxes. Children often grow up asking themselves in despair, "Is it really a good thing that I was born?" It also became the director's impulse to create the film. The film tells the story of two agents selling the child in the baby box, but also the story of how two women "become mothers" through their relationship with the baby, under this theme, Kore-eda does not want to end the story with the mother regretting having a child, but hopes that the film can convey the message that "birth is a beautiful thing".
At the beginning of "Broker", Xiuzhen, a policeman played by Pei Doona, sits in the car, watching from a distance as a woman puts the baby into the baby box of the church, saying a sentence: "I knew I had to abandon the child, and I shouldn't have been born in the first place." This critical attitude towards the mother who abandoned her child is the perspective of Xiuzhen's character at the beginning, and one of the narrative lines in the film is to track xiuzhen's perspective on this journey - from the police who originally wanted to sell the baby as bait to carry out the current arrest, to the empathetic "mother".
You can compare it to "Thief Family", which is similar to the story of a group of strangers who are not related by blood to form a family and then be forced to break up. What breaks the balance in the film is the power structure, the police intervention, so that the "thief family" disbanded on the spot, the tragic ending does not lose the emotional tension of the film, making the story more socially critical. The end of "Broker" makes a policeman empathetic, and the story of strong behavior gives a warm and bright ending, but the strength accumulated before is suddenly discouraged.
It was Kore-eda on the set of the filming of "The Broker".
I always thought that Kore-eda was very similar to Ang Lee, looking gentle and elegant on the outside, but his works hid sharp edges. Kore-eda is best at traditional Japanese family themes, and in seemingly waveless family relationships, there is actually an undercurrent.
In "Non-Stop Walking", Kiki Shirin's eldest son died 15 years ago to save a teenager who fell into the water, and the rescued teenagers come to worship the benefactors every year. Kiki Shirin's second son said to his mother, don't let him come in the future, it's very pitiful, and it's uncomfortable to see us. His mother said that it was because of this that he was allowed to come, and he forgot about it for more than 10 years, which was too cheap for him. It is not too much to let him suffer once a year, and no one can blame him for the most pain.
At first glance, the whole family is not alarmed, life is very calm, who knows that after the death of the eldest son, more than 10 years later, it will still bring pain to the family. This is the director Kore-eda's ability to hide under the lens, hide the needle in the cotton, and inadvertently break through your emotional defenses.
In Broker, Kore-eda also tries to capture some very subtle moving moments within the framework of a road movie genre. It was a scene that happened in the hotel, Su Ying lay on the bed, turned off the lights, and said to each family member, "Thank you for being born into this world", this very deliberate, ritualized scene, obviously not as good as in "Thief Family", Grandma Kiki Shirin sits on the beach, looking at the family playing on the beach, casually saying "Thank you" is really moving.
Beijing News reporter Teng Chao
Edited by Huang Jialing
Proofreading Liu Jun