Hacker Cinema
Nobody Knows
誰も知らない
2004 · Film · 141 min
Directed by Hirokazu Kore-eda
In a small Tokyo apartment, twelve-year-old Akira must care for his younger siblings after their mother leaves them and shows no sign of returning.
2 positivefrom 2 commenters
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2 comments on Hacker News
So personally I like films that makes me feel something without that feeling being explicitly forced upon me. This is an incredible thing to achieve that only a select few directors can do. Not “baiting” the viewers into emotions but also not being cold at the same time. Just by showing and how do they show it. Like the case of “a picture is worth a thousand words”. It’s a razor thin line but that makes these films I enjoy special and sincere.
(I'll only mentions stuff from the 21st century because otherwise I'd sit here for days)
I love japanese cinema so I'm very biased towards films from there.
- The Taste of Tea (2004) from Katsuhito Ishii
- Nobody Knows (2004) from Hirokazu Kore-eda
- Tony Takitani (2004) from Jun Ichikawa
- Memories of Matsuko (2006) from Tetsuya Nakashima
- Departures (2008) from Yojiro Takita
- Still Walking (2008) from Hirokazu Kore-eda
- Tokyo Sonata (2008) from Kiyoshi Kurosawa
- One Million Yen Girl (2008) from Yuki Tanada
- Haru’s Journey (2010) from Masahiro Kobayashi
- Story of Yonosuke (2013) from Shuichi Okita
- Shoplifters (2018) from Hirokazu Kore-eda
- Drive My Car (2021) from Ryūsuke Hamaguchi
Two korean film I've really liked
- The Handmaiden (2016) from Park Chan-wook
- Pieta (2012) from Kim Ki-duk
A chinese film I've seen recently and it was pretty good
- Black Coal, Thin Ice (2014) from Diao Yi-nan
Iranian films are incredibly good and crazy what they could make despite the situation there
- A Separation (2011) from Asghar Farhadi
- Taxi (2015) from Jafar Panahi
- The Salesman (2016) from Asghar Farhadi
- There Is No Evil (2020) from Mohammad Rasoulof
- My Favourite Cake (2024) from Maryam Moghaddam and Behtash Sanaeeha
Some european films I've enjoyed
- Enter the Void (2009) from Gaspar Noé
- Leviathan (2014) from Andrey Zvyagintsev
- Alcarràs (2022) from Carla Simón
- Fallen Leaves (2023) from Aki Kaurismäki
And last but not least some actual Hollywood films that I think are pretty good
- The Tree of Life (2011) from Terrence Malick
- Cloud Atlas (2012) from Lilly Wachowski and Lana Wachowski
- First Reformed (2017) from Paul Schrader
- Nickel Boys (2024) from RaMell Ross
All of them, to some degree. But here's a few off the top of my head that are maybe a little less well known that have really stuck with me over the years. I'll try not to say too much about them, and encourage you to go into them without spoilers, as I did:
* Leviathan (Russia, 2014) - It's a minor miracle this film was made and saw the light of day, depicting as it does the banality of corruption and impunity in provincial Russia. Not especially obscure, it won a slew of awards including a Golden Globe but it's not nearly as well-known as it should be. This film isn't didactic and there really are no "good guys" - it's at least as much a tale of love and loss. I certainly understood local corruption at an intellectual level - I saw plenty of it growing up in the American "Deep South," but as a middle-class white boy it was never really aimed at me. This film helped me feel the weight of it at a visceral level in a way I hadn't before.
* Nobody Knows (Japan, 2004) - Sometimes what shapes us is only visible in retrospect. Most parents, in my experience, will acknowledge the profound shift in mindset and empathy that occurs when you have a kid. Half a decade before my first, I can trace the first experience of those feels to this film. Surely this has something to do with my (20s) age when I saw it, but it's a rare film that triggers such a re-programming of the psyche. I feel duty-bound to warn this isn't a comedy.
* Leningrad Cowboys Go America (1989, Finland and America) - This IS a comedy. A band from (fictional) northern Russia unable to hit it big in the terminal-stage USSR (this film was released 8 months before the fall of the Berlin Wall) comes to America to seek fame. By Finland's (arguably) greatest director Aki Kaurismäki, the heart of the film is a journey through the forgotten routes and dives of the American South. The places are real. The extras are local. As a cinematographic document, it's the best road movie since Easy Rider. The band (by virtue of being visible outsiders) obliviously crosses all kinds of social boundaries, playing in redneck bars and juke joints alike. This film gave me an outsiders frame of reference to a part of the country where I grew up, and was an inspiration to me to get out and see the world. Inconsistently available, I've bought it on multiple physical formats over the years. For folks in the US, I guess HBO Max has a lot of Criterion-distributed films now so they might have it? But I can't tell because that service isn't available in the country where I now live.