Wen | go long bow
On May 19, 2018, French local time, the palme d'Or, the highest honor of the 71st French Cannes Film Festival, was awarded to the Japanese film "Thief Family". This is the fifth time a Japanese film has won this award, last time in 1997's "Eel". The director is Hirokazu Kore-eda, who became the fourth Japanese director in history to win the Palme d'Or after Sadanosuke Igusa, Akira Kurosawa and Masahira Imamura.
The 55-year-old Isahiro Kore-eda, a longtime Cannes regular, maintains a Japanese-style subtlety, saying "my legs are shaking" when he accepted the award. Fans see everything familiar in this latest award-winning work: disorderly society, disqualified individuals, children who no one knows. Poor and humble, crime-ridden, and traumatic people must hide their sorrows, cherish the small pieces of beauty in the plain, reorganize the family beyond blood, maintain it with the ties of family affection, and support each other to live hard. "Illusory Light", "Distance", "No one knows", "Miracle", "Non-stop", etc., each of which always touches a certain place in people's hearts.
After a director becomes famous, internationalization and commercialization are the only way, and Kore-eda is also not exempt. But his commercial films are always deconstructive of genres and anti-valuable. Adapted from the short comic of the same name in 2009, "Air Doll" is an international creative team of pure beauty and erotic interweaving, fabled and fairy tale overtones: South Korean actor Bae Doona, and Taiwanese photographer Lee Ping-bin. It tells that the sex doll Xiaowang has a "heart", and the newborn she perceives the beautiful world of weeds, breezes and flowers. But the people around them have lost their "heart", "empty and aimless", and live a lonely, painful, and muddy life. Xiao Wang was disappointed in such a world and threw himself into the garbage heap.
2006's "Samurai of Flowers" is Kore-eda's first attempt at samurai commercial film, based on the works of the famous samurai novelist Shuhei Fujisawa. This costume comedy completely subverts the spirit of the traditional "Bushido" advocated in samurai films, and no longer clings to the inhuman revenge of Fang Xiu. The protagonist, Junichi Okada, Aoki Muneyoshi, comes to Edoshita town to avenge his father's murder, and he and his poor neighbors are bitter and give up revenge. Samurai films became a warm comedy in the slums, a Kore-eda-style Edo life film.
In 2017, "The Third Degree Suspect" dabbled in suspense detective films. As Kore-eda puts it, it is "an ambiguous work that wears the shell of a crime film and explores what the truth is." As a detective suspense film, the criminal has been arrested at the beginning of the film, but the truth has not been revealed until the end. The criminal played by Hiroshi Hiroshi Hiroshi kills the factory owner but confesses three versions of the testimony. Whether he kills for money or protects the factory owner's daughter from sexual assault by the beast father, there is no answer. The film obscures the essential elements of detective films such as true and false, good and evil, good and evil. At the end of the film, the lawyer played by Masaharu Fukuyama stands at a crossroads, the criminals are executed, the truth is still hanging, and society is still full of problems.
Stills from the movie "Sea Street Diaries"
In 2015, "Sea Street Diaries" was adapted from Akio Yoshida's manga and was nominated for the 68th Cannes Palme d'Or. The three sisters of the Kaeda family have been cheating on their father and leaving home since they were young, and their mother has also remarried. At the beginning of the film, the father dies, and the three adult sisters take back their half-sister, and the four sisters live together in the old house left by their grandmother. The film is like the adult and girls' dormitory version of "Nobody Knows", gentle and bright, fresh and pure, indifferent as the wind, and completely unapologetic. The old house is like a paradise that is not disturbed by the outside world, and the girls feel the flow of the four seasons in this home. Enjoy home-cooked dishes full of emotions and memories, such as tempura, fried horse pods, and plum wine. At the end, the four sisters came to the beach, remembering their father who abandoned his wife and son, and the eldest sister said: "Although he is unreliable, he may be a gentle person, because he left us such a lovely sister." ”
People who like Kore-eda praise him for his introverted gentleness, sensitivity and delicacy, subtle restraint, and unfazed attitude. There is no fierce conflict, no criticism, always choose the good side of things. There are also voices criticizing him for being reduced to the "healing system", "chicken soup for the soul" and "japanese small freshness" of public interest; the directors of the Heisei era will not resist, but will only resign themselves to it, indulge in small happiness and small beauty, and deceive themselves. However, Zhi said that he had no intention of interfering with society with images, and did not like to impose judgment and convey ideas. He wrote in his essay collection "Like the Speed of Walking": "The director of the conceptual film thinks that he has the truth in his hands, but the world does not play according to his reasoning." I want to describe "there are no heroes, only ordinary people live, the moment when the somewhat dirty world suddenly becomes beautiful", and life lies in the plain and warm details, "the world is so wonderful, everyday life is beautiful".
2015's "Deeper Than the Sea" is like a companion piece to "Non-Stop Walking", with autobiographical overtones, made up of details of life. Also played by Hiroshi Abe, his name in the play is "Many", and Ms. Kiki Shirin once again plays the old mother. The title comes from the lyrics of Teresa Teresa's "Parting Premonition". The gambling-addicted Lot is an unsatisfactory novelist, and his wife has left him. Many returned home to visit their mother, who lived alone, and met his ex-wife and son. On the night of the typhoon, the reunited three people played in the park as usual, and after the rain passed, they parted ways again. Broken mirrors will not be reunited, and life will still move forward.
"Deeper than the Sea" was shortlisted for Cannes again, and many big sisters in the film laughed at him for "giving up writing, you won the award 15 years ago." Since more than 20 years in the film, Kore-eda has won many awards at home and abroad, and has occasionally gained 6 battles in Cannes, but it still lacks a real laurel. When the crew members of "Thief Family" collectively appeared on the red carpet - "Grandmother" Kiki Shirin, "Father" Masaya Nakagawa, the kind face, the family atmosphere of men, women and children was touching. In this way, the contemporary Japanese "author" director carries his "family" and enters the palace of the Palme d'Or with a steady and unceasing pace.