Like Father Like Son

Like Father Like Son
120 Minutes
Hirokazu Kore-eda (Director)
Available on Japanese Amazon Prime (Japanese) or on iTunes (with subs)



In the last few weeks Kore-eda's newest work, Shoplifters （万引き家族）, who has been the Japanese awards darling of the handful of years came up short at the Oscars (Roma was impossible to beat) and then nearly swept the top awards in the Japanese Academy Awards, winning picture, director and actress, and losing in the actor category.

I haven't had a chance to see Shoplifters yet, and in all honesty, have never been the biggest fan of modern Japanese films. However, winning 3 of the last 4 best pictures, along with such hype has led me to give Kore-eda the attention I maybe should have done already.

So, I sat down on a Saturday evening and watched what many have called Kore-eda's best film, Like Father Like Son (そして父になる).

Here we have the story of two families, one rich with a single child being molded into the next generations rich... in order to repeat this ad nauseam, and the other, possibly describable as poor, but free and loving. They are informed early in our film that five years earlier a mixup at the hospital sent the wrong child home with each family.

I think in most other countries this situation wouldn't allow for the depth it does set in Japan. Even today, adoption is not a consideration here, and blood is both the definition of family and nationality (as opposed to country of birth).


*Spoilers Ahead*

Masaharu Fukuyama plays Ryota, the well off and overly serious workaholic father. Unthinkable to most fathers, Ryota allows a comment from his own father about the meaning of family to lead him to demand the return of his blood son.

Though that might be a slight spoiler, I will stop there and not give any more specifics, but only comment on how the film as a whole works, and it works very well.

I was oddly reminded of Kurosawa's High and Low while watching this film. Of course they are both completely different in feeling and plot, but it was this initial twist, where here a father in the midst of forming his perfect duplicate is stunned, felt so much to me like the father in Kurosawa's film deciding to pay the kidnapper only to find that it is not his son, but his driver's who has been taken. Both situations force a decision, to choose one of the roads, and both decisions and what follows paint amazingly vivid and interesting portraits of men.

Additionally I think the work of Lily Franky, playing Yudai, the less well off, more loving father, is remarkable and endearing. It is in his imperfection, the hints that he is far from a perfect father, or man, that allow us to keep this from being a melodrama about a bad father who learns to love. We see Yudai's good points and bad points... and although it is obvious that Ryota's bad points are more glaring (especially as a father) Yudai's flaws make this moving a true portrait of an incredible but believable situation.

Overall, this is a great and interesting work, highlighting what can be done in modern Japanese cinema. What might be lacking in the polish of Hollywood, can be made up for in the opportunity to examine issues and situations, that by being Japanese can be unique, but very often, universal.

Very highly recommended!

                                               A picture tells much of the story.