Nobody Knows (2005)

I honestly don't know what to say. I'm actually crying right now, I've just finished watching the movie and it was outstanding. The actors were amazing, and the story, well... It's one of the best movies I've ever seen, I'm definitely giving it 10 out of 10.After their mom left I wished I could help them in any way possible, it was just heartbreaking to watch (even through it was just a film) and not to be able to do anything :( I'm not going to say anything more, you all NEED to see this movie. You won't regret it, I promise.Hopefully there will be more movies like this one in the future, but less real cases :)

A semi-fictionalized adaption of a true incident where a single mother abandons four children to live by themselves seems the material of exploitation or empty moralizing. But Kore-eda proves himself one of the finest film makers in the world today with this straight up masterpiece - a gorgeous, searingly intelligent, beautifully made film.One of the great strengths of this film is that he never takes the easy way out and judges the adults or tries to score easy points about an atomized, uncaring society. The mother is portrayed as child like herself, narcissistic, but more deluded than evil, she somehow convinces herself that her 12 year old son is capable of looking after the family. The adults are just regular people, going about their lives without feeling the need to ask awkward questions about the dirty looking children who turn up sometimes at playgrounds or wander around parks. The only people who suspect these children are abandoned are teenagers working in local shops, who are cowed into not taking the initiative, instead just offering little acts of kindness to the kids, accepting at face value the lies given to them.This is perhaps the most successful film ever made which gives a genuine child's eyed view of the world. The acting by the child actors is simply astonishing - completely naturalistic. The way in which these fundamentally nice kids try their best to deal with the situation they are landed in, but which inevitably falls apart is deeply moving and entirely convincing. The film is long, but is entirely engrossing, and enlightened with moments of real beauty and grace. The scene where the older boy and a lonely girl he meets bring his dead sister to the airport, where he always said he would show here the airplanes landing is quite stunning. To avoid sentimentality or exploitation in scenes like this requires a film maker with deep humanity, as well as immense technical skill. The film is not the easiest of viewing, but after seeing this film, you will never forget it. Absolutely essential.

I've seen it for the first time maybe like a year ago but, was just looking through some of it again and noticed how many good scenes there are in this film. It also has great atmosphere that pulls you in partly due to the cinematography and overall realism. The kids acting is very believable. Especially the oldest and the two youngest kids. I guess at some points the two youngest aren't even acting, they're playing themselves and it looks so natural that it greatly increases the realism of the film. After seeing this film I thought I could never be fully immersed in a normal fiction film. I felt like I had watched a documentary but then I remembered that this wasn't a documentary but a fiction based on real events. This is a film that makes you forget you're watching a film. And this is not the case with a lot of films these days for me. The soundtrack is subtle and moving. I'm bothered by the fact that I could have just missed this film and not seen it. I found it on IMDb. Who knows how many other good films are out there that I just missed because there wasn't a big budget promotion for them.

Sure "Nobody knows" has an interesting premise with 4 children forced to live on their own and how they are coping with it. But I nearly fell asleep several times through the movie because the way of its storytelling (if you can call it that because it pretty much leads nowhere) is unbelievably slow. The movie starts of with the family moving into a new flat, at that point its just the single mom with the oldest son Akira who introduces herself to the landlord while the younger kids are smuggled in the flat in suitcases and oldest sister Kyoko arrives by train. You never quite get to know how things came to become like this... the kids are hidden and like the title says nobody knows about their existence because except for Akira who becomes kind of the caring father for the family no kid is allowed to leave the flat. From here on the movie just deals with their everyday routine... the mother, a prostitute as I expect, is absent more and more until she disappears and just sends cash by mail. She is depicted as a loving yet kind of childlike mother who can't take the responsibility.The fathers are all different guys who are introduced shortly as non caring slackers but I never understood why these kids all don't go to school with their mother telling them they can't because they don't have fathers. A lot is left pretty wide open and I guess the mother is supposed to have some mental defect, otherwise the whole thing is pretty unbelievable. When she meets a man and disappears Akira finally becomes the father part of the family trying to cope with feeding the kids and taking care of the flat while finding some friends and trying to live a normal kids live which obviously fails in the less than normal surrounding. Bills don't get paid, the kids lose electricity and then water and try to get by getting water from a playground fountain and doing laundry there. Later in the movie they leave their flat but it seems like nobody cares if they do and honestly the viewer cares less too because the movie is so slow with so little dialog and some scenes stretched to a seemingly endless level. The characters sure are interesting, especially Akira and the sweet little Yuki amidst that mess she couldn't choose. It looks like Akira wants to keep the kids together because he fears they could be separated to several child homes if someone finds out.But thats about all you know... the daily routine is getting more desperate, the state of the flat and the kids clothes is deteriorating and finally Yuki gets ill. What makes it hard to get into the movie beside the extremely slow pacing is that the kids are not depicted as a loving family but rather like just trying to get by. The barely talk and seem separate so their fun time strolls as well as Yukis dramatic burial (sure, you get a piece of drama too) seem distant and right then the movie ends. Mother keeps sending cash by mail, everything just goes on. I pretty much felt left down after watching this boring movie with an end like this. Seeing the 8point votes I really wonder if we watched the same movie because since the cinematography was rather average and the music close to non existing there is not much that makes me want to give more than 4points to this one. Only for people who are into slow artsy dramas with endless shots.