NOBODY KNOWS (Dare mo shiranai)
Seen at:  Princeton Garden Theatre, Princeton, New Jersey
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Starring:  Yûya Yagira (Akira), Ayu Kitaura (Kyoko), Hiei Kimura (Shigeru), Momoko Shimizu (Yuki), Hanae Kan (Saki), You (The Mother)   
Director: Hirokazu Kore-eda 
Writing Credits: Hirokazu Kore-eda
Distributor:  IFC Films (USA 2005)
Running Time:  141 minutes
Rated: PG-13 for mature thematic elements and some sexual references.

What nobody knows is that the mother of four young children has abandoned them to raise themselves in a Tokyo apartment.  Even before the mother leaves, the children, two boys and two girls, do all the shopping, cooking, cleaning, bill-paying, laundry, and child-rearing.  They have neither the time nor the freedom to be children.  The children know they must hide from the landlord on pain of eviction; early on, the mother smuggles them into the apartment as literal and metaphorical luggage.  Three of the children never see the sun and cannot step outside for something as simple as retrieving a toy.  None go to school.  None have any friends.  Only the oldest, Akira, at age 12, has his mother's permission to venture out into the world -- to do chores.  When the mother leaves on an extended fling with yet another womanizer, the household hardly misses a beat.  Money is the only good the mother contributed to the home; on first blush, it seems that, provided she leaves sufficient money, she need never come back.

But NOBODY KNOWS knows better than that.  In even the best-appointed of homes, with the best-dispositioned of children, danger abounds.  Akira chops onions quickly with a large knife, unsupervised -- we expect with every thud that he will have lost of finger.  The older girl, Kyoko, draws a bath.  The movie quickly cuts to the boiling pit of curry that Akira has prepared.  The mind races with stories remembered of unwatched children, children caring for themselves, being badly burned by boiling water.  These household forces, so weak in the expert control of a watchful adult, threaten to consume the children at every turn.

Arika and Yuki's father proves to be of little help.  Like deadbeat dads the world over, he has his own money problems.  The adults of NOBODY KNOWS act like children, spoiled, peevish, self-interested, pretending to be acting responsibly but fooling no-one.  It falls on the children to be somber, responsible, industrious, selfless, and honest.  The children of the apartment and their peers outside seem to come from different worlds.  The abandoned children are quiet, pallid, increasingly gaunt, intent, their clothes fading and torn.  The children outside make noise, run, play, dress sharply and look immaculate.  A single day outside for the abandoned children bursts with fun, like a flood pouring down from fat leaden clouds.

Unlike most movies, which are filmed out of order, NOBODY KNOWS was filmed chronologically.  We can see the children, the apartment, their clothes, age, badly.  Akira grows a schoolboy mustasche.  All of the children gain in height.  The long running time and frequent tracking shots add to the impression that we're seeing a significant chunk of the children's lives.  When the inevitable tragedy comes, we get painfully physical proof that it is growing children whose lives have been arrested.

The mother left to start a new family.  She simply forgot this old one.  Like all narcissists, loving the children had meant to her allowing them to love her and help her.  The melancholy of these children, left alone in the adult-sized world, is unbearable.  All the more so because, unlike the children in City of God, we saw these children with a mother, with electricity and running water, with new clothes and toys and food.  To see each element of their life and budding personhood disappear because of criminal parental neglect rips at the heart.  NOBODY KNOWS ranks among the saddest movies ever made.

The credits at close list the mother as "You."  I thought the director meant it as a charge levelled against society, as in "you, the deadbeat moms and dads, the failed foster system, the extended families and neighbors who look away from child abuse, the society which trusts any adult with the children they happen to bring into the world, YOU are the ones who've abandoned these children."  Actually, per IMDB, the actress "You" has appeared in several films -- sort of an Asian Cher.  Not that I have a guilty conscience or anything.

-- Martin Scribbs