The quiet act of noticing: How Hirokazu Kore-eda captures empathy
The quiet act of noticing: How Hirokazu Kore-eda captures empathy
Feature art by Abigail Manaluz
Our emotions often fall prey to their nature of being invisible, shapeless, and indefinite. We try to negotiate through words what we wish to fully and intentionally express, but sometimes they simply lack the capacity to do so—and Hirokazu Kore-eda understands this intimately.
The Japanese auteur distills the soul of his films through a gush of stillness and in the tiniest of details, that seem innocuous in hindsight but possess layers waiting to be uncovered. Tenderness, the beauty of the ordinary, and moments of quiet rest; such are the little forces that carry Kore-eda’s movies, inviting the viewer to be more appreciative of what makes life elegantly and rightfully small.
There’s little to over-explain but much to be quietly reminded of.
Lacking any prejudiced notions or reductive leanings, Kore-eda's deep care for his characters and the worlds they inhabit forms a cinematic experience that, while challenging to go through because of the murkiness of the themes, is utterly captivating; you wouldn’t want to miss a second of what he has to show. With an evergreen curiosity for the mundane he places the most trust in the static moments of everyday life, believing they can make empowering statements that beautifully emerge when given a moment of attention.
At the heart of it all is empathy: a constant thread that slithers through his stories, encouraging viewers not just to witness but to bind with full mindfulness the enlightening connections between his characters' lives and our own as they grapple with the aching familiarity of shared experiences. This empathy lingers, leaving an imprint that's nearly impossible to rip apart once it has taken hold of you, reminding you how to look at the world long after the credits roll.
Here, I sift through Kore-eda’s filmography and explore how the quietest moments of his films shed light on his capture of empathy.
Still Walking (2008)
Yoshio Harada in ‘Still Walking.’
Kyohei, a retired countryside doctor and old-fashioned father awaiting the arrival of his son Ryota, delicately picks up the fallen petals of a flower he’s very fond of and attempts to reassemble them, as if playfully defying the inexorable passage of time. In this short-lived silence, the futility of resisting time’s parasitic grip on our impermanence becomes painfully clear yet remains as small and understated as the scope of Still Walking.
The film carefully threads the themes of family, youth, parenthood, mortality, and their bids to move along with the feebleness of time. In just one day a house is stripped bare beyond its edges. What initially appears as a menial setup for a visit commemorating a late family member blooms into a narrative journey that sets out to examine the generational implications of familial ties, from marriage to child-rearing, and their accompanying ambitions and expectations.
Through patient observations, the film pierces right to the core of how a household can influence the outgrowth of adulthood and adolescence. Layers upon layers of histories are unwoven, leaving behind an unresolved craving to stand firmly in the present without over focusing on past actions or pondering about what if’s.
Still from ‘Still Walking.’
Small yet unassuming interactions, like Kyohei’s strained expectations of his children or the unspoken grief over a deceased family member, reveal how these relationships are both bruised and consequential. However, the bond is far from disposable; even Ryota knows this as he carefully tapes back together his hand-drawn family portrait he had crumpled.
Later in the film, three pairs of hands—one of which belongs to Ryota's stepson—reach for a blossoming flower. Coincidentally, it’s Kyohei's favorite kind. Perhaps through this scene we can tend to what remains of the past to grow hope for something anew.
Shoplifters (2018)
Still from ‘Shoplifters.’
In typical Japanese media, festivals are often depicted in the most adorned fashion: replete with vibrant colors and buoyed by the energy of a crowd, like ants swarming a crumb of food. But in Shoplifters, we witness how a family appreciates a festival only through the sound of fireworks, and their smiles are more than enough to convince us that they’ve hit some kind of jackpot in the unforgiving game life plays out in reality.
In this Palme d'Or-winning film, Kore-eda offers a searing culmination of his pathos, delivering a wide-ranged and subtle critique of the inescapable systemic pressures imposed by society on those living at the fringes of economic disparity. Such inequities leave individuals with little choice but to resort to desperate impulses for survival. Yet compassion still remains. The six members of this loosely defined family choose to stay together despite their predicaments. Abandoned and uneducated, abused and orphaned—these human beings challenge conventional morality, which begs the question: what is truly enough to deserve relief from an exhaustion that feels earned rather than merely a consequence?
Still from ‘Shoplifters.’
A father giddily dreaming of being called "dad," a mother determined to break the cycle of abuse through an embrace, a grandmother willing to risk her bed being wet by a child, a runaway who never judges and instead offers warmth, a son eager to go to school, and a daughter who prefers to be "kidnapped" because she feels more at home in a dilapidated space—each of these individuals, against contradiction and crushing odds, would willingly choose love above all, yet they are placed in positions that strip away their ability to do so.
It’s a moment of defeated realization that the two sweetest and most cathartic lines in the film are spoken in muted sound. It’s not a festival or a fireworks show, but it becomes a momentary portrait of a family, one built not on coincidences but on conscious choices.
Monster (2023)
Sakura Ando in ‘Monster.’
Not far into the beginning arc of Monster we learn that Mugino “loaned” one of his shoes to Yori. However, as the audience, we are more focused on the overarching plot at this point in the film: the thriller-esque mystique of his mother’s pursuit of justice against a seemingly ignorant and incompetent school that tries to dismiss the signs of abuse manifesting in Mugino's body and behavior.
The mother blames, with striking aggression, both the principal and the teacher; the former accused of accidentally causing her grandchild's death, and the latter alleged to have physically and verbally violated Mugino. As the film progresses, however, other perspectives shed light on different truths. From the oddball hobbyist teacher to the grieving, brass-playing principal, each one continuously struggles with the aftermath of rumors spreading faster than their healing from personal strife. It’s as if the film is playing with the motif of blame in its structure, making us shift our gaze in different directions to uncover who the real monster is beneath it all. But it’s not what we know that defines a monster; it’s what we don’t.
Sōya Kurokawa and Hinata Hiiragi in ‘Monster.’
Within these circling stories are the children who neither deserve to be reborn nor ostracized; innocents who simply want to share a reprieve, a familiar train, or a shoe, so they can run carefree, rid from muddling circumstances and pressure from peers, coming into their own—just their own.
There is no greater lie one can commit than displacing someone's truth with your own. It's theirs to tell, and no one else's.
