{"id":408,"date":"2008-09-25T20:31:43","date_gmt":"2008-09-25T20:31:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/?page_id=408"},"modified":"2008-09-29T13:21:09","modified_gmt":"2008-09-29T13:21:09","slug":"nobody-knows","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/library\/reviews\/nobody-knows\/","title":{"rendered":"Nobody Knows"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>JETAA NY at the MOVIES<br \/>\nNOBODY KNOWS<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-style: italic;\">(Winter 2005 Issue)<\/p>\n<p><\/span>JETAA NY recently gave away several free tickets for a premier U.S. screening of Hirokazu Koreeda\u2019s hit film, \u201cNobody Knows\u201d at the<br \/>\nLincold Plaza Cinemas.\u00a0 Here\u2019s what the ticket recipients had to say about the film.<\/p>\n<p>The based-on-a-true-story account of 4 children left by their mother to fend for themselves in an apartment, \u201cNobody Knows\u201d is shot<br \/>\nin a documentary style with prompted improvisation by the cast of amateur child actors. Left alone, the children cope well at first<br \/>\nthen slowly sink into desperation as they realize \u201cMom\u201d (played by mono-monikered actress \u201cYou\u201d) is never coming back to rescue<br \/>\nthem.<br \/>\n(Isaac Leader)<\/p>\n<p>In the beginning of the film, the mother is present, albeit distracted, and often away from home.\u00a0 We learn rather than the one child<br \/>\nshe claims in public, whose father, she tells people, is \u201cworking abroad,\u201d that she has three other illegitimate children, who she hides<br \/>\nfrom public view by not enrolling them in school or letting them leave the house.\u00a0 Although that is extreme and abusive, I confess that<br \/>\npart of my heart was initially with the mother, who I pictured as a victim of modern society which offers precious little support to<br \/>\nworking mothers, not to mention unmarried working mothers.\u00a0 She leaves early in the morning for work (we assume), often not<br \/>\nreturning until late in the evening.\u00a0 But when she does return, we see a few tender moments of hair brushing, nail painting, omiyage-<br \/>\ngiving, and study help, all of which leads us to believe that while she is eccentric, she really does love her children and is doing the<br \/>\nbest she knows how.<br \/>\n(Nancy DeBroka)<\/p>\n<p>The remarkable thing about the film is that it can be viewed simultaneously as a horror movie and as a sympathetic portrayal of<br \/>\ninnocents caught in a tragedy, much the way \u201cMonster\u201d showed the humanity and heartbreak of a murderess. It succeeds on both<br \/>\ncounts, helped along by artful camera work, endearing characters, moments of levity, and a beautiful, haunting score, posing serious<br \/>\nquestions about social responsibility along the way.<br \/>\n(Isaac Leader)<\/p>\n<p>It is a poignant story on multiple levels, including the superb acting by the child stars, the gorgeous cinematography, the<br \/>\ninterweaving of the city soundtrack and most importantly, by the way Kore-eda allows the storytelling to develop in a truly non-<br \/>\nHollywood fashion.\u00a0 For the viewer, there\u2019s no overproduction and manufactured silliness, just a unique chance to view the innocence<br \/>\nand charm of childhood in a real-world setting.<br \/>\n(Bryan DeBroka)<\/p>\n<p>There were moments of sheer beauty: the boy running as the camera runs with him through the streets of Tokyo by night; the joy of<br \/>\nthe little one when she is taken to wait for the mother at the train station; the children getting to have a kind of Christmas celebration.<br \/>\n(Anonymous)<\/p>\n<p>A question that remained in my mind was what made the children stay quiet for so long? It was as if the shame that they felt, and the<br \/>\nneed to keep their \u201clittle secret\u201d was more important than their safety.\u00a0 After they realized that their mother had truly abandoned<br \/>\nthem, why didn\u2019t they go to the police or child protective services? Even if they had gotten split up, surely their situation would have<br \/>\nbeen better than trying to make it on their own. It made me wonder what the CPS (child protective services) is like in Japan, and what<br \/>\nhappens to children that are abandoned by their parents.\u00a0 Where do they go?<br \/>\n(Maura Goggins)<\/p>\n<p>While it is easy for certain of us to sit in judgment in a movie theater, or at least scratch our heads thinking, \u201cHow could no one<br \/>\nknow?\u201d it really makes one wonder how much responsibility each of us bears for those less fortunate. Who is the \u201cNobody\u201d of the title<br \/>\nactually, and do they have a responsibility to know, to help?<br \/>\n(Isaac Leader)<\/p>\n<p>Coming out of a country as ruthlessly non-interventionist even in daily life as modern Japan, where a vast majority of young urban<br \/>\nwomen report being groped on the subways and three rescued NGO hostages last year were publicly humiliated and driven into<br \/>\nhiding by government\/media bullying for \u201cmeddling\u201d in Iraq, this film would seem intrinsically to be a rebuke to this \u201chear no, see no,<br \/>\nspeak no evil\u201d tendency. . . \u201d.\u00a0 Bravo to Mr. Koreeda for striking, intentionally or not, at the real problem within the heart of Japan\u2019s<br \/>\nstruggle for respect via \u201cinternationalization\u201d: a massive blind spot when it comes to recognizing the humanity of the \u201cother\u201d, or<br \/>\n\u201coutsider\u201d. This tendency was most visible to the world in aspects of Japan\u2019s military adventurism leading up to and during WWII, but<br \/>\nit would seem that a perceived continuing inability to reconcile old race-based nationalistic notions with an increasingly<br \/>\nmulticultural and interconnected world is a primary reason why Japan has not assumed a more prominent role in civic society,<br \/>\ndespite huge economic gains and gifts to former colonies and victims.<br \/>\n(Isaac Leader)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>JETAA NY at the MOVIES NOBODY KNOWS (Winter 2005 Issue) JETAA NY recently gave away several free tickets for a premier U.S. screening of Hirokazu Koreeda\u2019s hit film, \u201cNobody Knows\u201d at the Lincold Plaza Cinemas.\u00a0 Here\u2019s what the ticket recipients had to say about the film. The based-on-a-true-story account of 4 children left by their [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":59,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-408","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/PkZ7m-6A","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/408","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=408"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/408\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":666,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/408\/revisions\/666"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/59"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}