Shoplifters

For this stunning masterpiece Shoplifters, Hirokazu Koreeda should win the Academy Award for Best Director. It is unbelievable that the rather complicated characters and their relationships are depicted in just two hours. The approach is mild, understated, low-profile, subtle and nuanced. Much room, space and thought are left to the viewers. The direction is simply super smart.

The cinematography is extraordinary, with some surprising long shots, close-ups and beautiful shots from tight angles. The editing is speechless, connecting numerous scenes just seamlessly. Not a single minute is wasted, and the film is largely intense and arresting. Together with the brilliant performances from the ensemble cast, the result is a satisfying and deeply affecting drama on lower class in Japan.

Academy Award's official entry from Japan Shoplifters already earned so many awards and could even got every awards if there was no 'Roma'. Shoplifters questions us and left us to find the answer. The question could be seen in the trailer too. It was "Does giving birth automatically makes you a mother?" Though shoplifters is not made on this very topic. It's more than this.

They are family with husband, wife, and grandma and with two kids. They are poor. The man named Osamu (Lily Franky) shoplift everyday with his kid named Shota (Jyo Kairi). They return home and feel their stomach with the foods along with the other members of the family. One day returning home Osamu and Shota found a little girl (Miyu Sasaki) was outside of his home who had no one in their family then. They took her into their little house full with humanity and everybody welcome her. On the next day they went to return her but ended up hearing their parents were fighting over her existence and that's why they decided to took her into their house.

All of them in this family earn legally or illegally. They are not all innocent but they do have innocence. This film is adorable with it's realistic family goals. No matter what this family is actually happy over anything they has. But will not they try to do something which is acceptable? They are helpless too. They are free, they enjoy their time. The little girl who used to get beaten by her parents made a great relationship with this family too.

First of all there is nothing to spoil this film. The trailer showed almost all of this movie. This film is made on the views over a poor japaneese family. Hirokazu wanted us to feel for them. And it worked amazingly by his artistically work. Shoplifters never gives you any hard moments and this film has no center conflict. It's like a flowing river that has some stones in the middle. Shoplifters is an adorable journey throughout an road of humanity.

Amazing screenplay form Hirokazu and masterclass acting from all the cast gave me goosebumps in moments. There are moments that can make you cry and laugh at the same time. Shoplifters will be always live with my heart. And I liked it by watching 8.1 on imdb over 17k votes. It is really good to see normal people started liking this kind of arts too.

I'm putting down 8/10 for a "rating", but basically I have no idea how to put a movie like this numerically in comparison with just about any Hollywood effort. It really belongs on a different scale entirely. My wife and I are just back from seeing it at our local art-cinema theater and we liked it very much. Stylistically, for other recent movies it's close to "Roma" and also the American indie film "Leave No Trace" as bittersweet, unhurried explorations of quite real human beings working hard to survive.

"Shoplifters" follows the lives of a makeshift "family" living in the underside of an unnamed Japanese city (the particular place isn't important). The adults scrape by with low-security, low-paid jobs, the grandma has a small pension income, and the kids are vagabonds. They get by in a crowded, ramshackle tenement and the two kids are busy picking up the techniques of petty shoplifting from the adults. We slowly learn that almost none of them are actually related; they've haphazardly chosen each other to live with in a framework a little outside the margins of normal society. All of them, in some way, have left or been taken out of abusive or dangerous previous relationships. Throughout their exploits, told by a long series of short vignette scenes, is that they indeed feel close bonds but that their "family" is built, not by blood, but by the constant kindness they show towards each other. They survive on the margins, but they love and are loved.

The second and much more subliminal big message I took away from this film was its ambience: it's quiet. Scenes that would -- in a Hollywood film -- predictably lead to shouting matches or displays of anger or confrontations with authority, *never* take that cheap overdramatized route here. When confronted with tough questions, the main characters answer reflectively and with spare honesty. Even out on the streets with traffic and lots of people around, it's quiet. What a change.

Toward the end of the film, the main characters are being patiently interviewed by social services staff in a series of magnetically powerful scenes. The "family" members' answers are often startling: "Why were you teaching your son to shoplift?" "I ... didn't know anything else to teach him." or: "Didn't you take your grandma and threw her away?" "No. Someone else threw her away; we took her in." or: "The child belongs with her mother." "No. Giving birth doesn't make her a mother." From small glimpses like this, a window opens into an entire world of human nature.

A small family of small-scale thieves finds a lost girl on the outskirts of a cold street and decides to give her shelter.

Enter with this film waiting for a kind of family history with light teachings, however, I end up being a very special work full of sweet moments and at the same time provocative, with ideas and messages that challenge us about our true definition of family and trust. With a sad and melancholic narrative that makes us feel small moments of beauty and union, but little by little begins to reveal layer by layer on a more bittersweet and human truth.

Filmed in an excellent way with a cinematography designed to stay around the eyes of youngsters, with a soft and melancholic soundtrack that perfectly complements the scenes. The performances are fantastic from the entire cast, especially the children, who give a realistic and humane representation when it comes to their performances. The script is fantastic and human, teaching them a hard reality and difficult to grasp many times by our intangible minds, people who try to survive day by day through bad actions, but still try to keep their intentions pure and good.

A film quite unique, original and emotional, full of hard and sad moments that move us completely but eventually end up revealing a new truth different from what we believed, highly recommended without a doubt.

After filming several high-profile, slow-paced family dramas, the director Hirokazu Koreeda finally broke through the comfort zone he set up for himself in recent years. Through more skillful techniques and a more sagacious perspective, the tenacity and courage in "Nobody Knows" finally yielded an unhappy but very profound ending in the film. Even though the reconciliation between the individual and the world is no longer given hope, Hirokazu Koreeda's past unsolved thoughts resonate in a virtual space.. Therefore, it is not a bragging to call this film his masterpiece.