"Golden Palm" - the main prize of the Cannes Film Festival - received the film "Shoplifters" by Japanese director Hirokazu Koreeda. I will tell you how a quiet, calm, not revolutionary and not provocative picture about the life of an unusual family bypassed the favorites of the contest - and why she really deserved to win.
Cannes Film Festival creates the history of cinema. However, not every year. Sometimes "Golden Palm" goes to films that change the world and look at it: in the XXI century - "Dancer in the Dark", "4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days", "The White Ribbon", "Blue Is the Warmest Color". Sometimes - to pictures frankly speculative and simply mediocre: "The Son's Room", "Dheepan", "I, Daniel Blake". In addition, it happens that the jury does not find a single favorite and the most prestigious film trophy of the world is handed to the compromise film, which, at least, suits everyone. As a rule, the film is good, but not revolutionary and not outstanding. It happened this time.
The author of the winning "Shoplifters" 55-year-old Japanese Hirokazu Koreeda could receive the "Golden Palm" simply by a combination of merit. Of the fifteen dozen of his films, the overwhelming majority participated in competitions at leading festivals, some were recognized as outstanding and received prizes. Today, the great Japanese cinema is going through hard times: there are no universally recognized geniuses like Kurosawa and Ozu, and the heroes of the 1990s - Takeshi Kitano and Hayao Miyazaki - are close to retirement. The hardworking and not overly ambitious Hirokazu Koreeda in this situation became the main representative of his country, regularly and thoroughly investigating the classic obsessions and neuroses of the Japanese. The most important themes of his quiet, calm, never causing harsh reactions of paintings - the collapse and restoration of the family and the spell of death. This is his most famous work - "After Life", "Nobody Knows", "Like Father, like Son". Not an exception and "Shoplifters" - maybe not the most outstanding film of the director, but, undoubtedly, strong and intelligent.
In the center of the plot - the family Shibata. In the first scene of the film, father and son masterfully steal every little thing in a big supermarket. One distracts attention, the other casually drops a package of chips or a pack of noodles into its backpack: it’s clear that the technology has been worked out perfectly. On the way home, two people find a hungry and frightened girl in the garbage. Instead of handing her over to the police, they bring her home, wash her, feed her, and change her clothes, like in an old fairy tale. Then they leave in their crowded family: grandmother, father, mother, older adult sister, son, now also Yuri.
The gradual rapprochement of the waking baby with other members of the family is shown so touchingly and convincingly that the viewer, in general, does not ask himself the question, not whether to consider the sudden adoption of an apparently lost child as a kidnapping. Maybe because the peace-loving Shibata is not inclined to any form of violence. The father works at a construction site where he is injured once; mother - in dry cleaning. The older sister is a peep show worker. Grandmother sits with babies who play peacefully at home or on the street even without supervision. There is always not enough money, but love and solidarity in abundance. They are happy to spend time together at dinner or on the beach, never complain about the poor life, do not expect indulgences from life, taking its blows with humor and courage. Who will convict them of shoplifting? After all, as the boy rightly states, "things in the supermarkets still do not belong to anyone, so this is not theft." The pacifyingly traditional cinema language as if encourages the viewer to take a break from tedious experiments - as if you came home and sat down to drink tea at the TV, feeling the heat and peace. However, Koreeda never pretended to be an innovator and avant-gardist.
Further in the plot there is a sharp, carefully and imperceptibly prepared by his whole turn, turn. He turns the film into an outstanding work of art. Once a kind grumpy grandmother does not wake up in the morning. Relatives react stoically, but they do not even think about calling the appropriate services: they themselves bury the body. At this point, many alarming details are accumulating. For example, the news repeatedly reported missing Yuri and mom and dad looking for her, but the new parents did not even think about returning the girl to the family. The end comes when children are caught on another theft. Running away from the guards, the boy jumps off the bridge, breaks his leg and goes to the hospital, where doctors wonder about his documents.
It turns out that Shibata only pretend to be family. The "father" and the "mother" are not married - they are lovers who got together after they killed the cruel husband of a woman together. The girl from the peep show came to them at the request of her parents, who were apparently embarrassed by their daughter. The boy was found abandoned in the car and adopted as the “mother” is sterile. Even the grandmother is in fact a non-relative one: the old woman was accepted into the company, since her pension served as the basis of the family budget.
For the state, Shibata is a group of offenders for whom the prison cries; all their actions can be explained by seeking benefits or fleeing the crimes committed. For the audience, they are cordial and innocent people in difficult circumstances. True, in another situation, family ties would serve as an excuse for everything that the heroes have done. However, there is no blood connection between them at all - this paradox leads to confusion.
Real parents abandoned their daughter. Others have forgotten the child in the car. Yuri's mom and dad beat her often: when they found her, she was all bruised. Now the guardianship brought her back. "Shoplifters" instantly grow from private history into a metaphorical social diagnosis. Before us is an awesome panorama of the crisis of "family thought", which seems relevant not only for Japan. In addition, at the same time, it is a utopian alternative in which relatives are chosen, and intimacy becomes a conscious choice (even for children), and not destined in documents. The law against Shibata. Probably will always be against it. The modern world allows a person to choose a gender and social identity, but it is unlikely to ever allow the choice of parents and children, brothers and sisters, and grandparents.
https://youtu.be/Rwcb5ki1f-4["SHOPLIFTERS" English Final Trailer](https://youtu.be/Rwcb5ki1f-4)
The shockingly tough, yet devoid of outrageous plot resolution raises conservative in terms of "Shoplifters" style over many other, even more expressive and individual, films on a similar theme. It is possible to understand not only the members of the Shibata family, but also the members of the Cannes jury, who chose this one from all the competitive paintings - modest and probably imperfect, but piercingly accurate and truthful.
The illustrations are used in agreement with the Depositphotos photobank
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