Best known Stateside for warm-blooded, multi-layered family tales (STILL WALKING/’08; LIKE FATHER, LIKE SON/’13), Japanese writer/director Hirokazu Kore-eda shows impressive range in this methodical & deliberately paced, but consistently compelling courtroom drama. The victim, a small factory owner, has evidently been murdered & robbed by a recently fired employee, a man who’s killed before. But little turns out to be quite as straightforward as we are first led to believe. Or, indeed, first shown. (In film, seeing is always believing.) The confession may be a partial lie; even a complete one. A false statement given to take the death penalty off the table. Or perhaps to protect a family member’s participation in the crime. (That’s a member of the victim’s family.) Then, in a self-destructive move as the trial nears an end, the accused reverses his plea, reneges on his confession and reverts to ‘the truth.’ Whatever that is. A move all but guaranteed to doom his case. Kore-eda lays all this out with deceptive calm, the interview sequences in jail between client & lawyer, a masterclass in close-up camera positioning and changing levels of power. The typical Japanese reserve can be puzzling to Western audiences at times. (Hey! Speak up! Be a bit rude and tell us what you want!) But it’s Real Deal, fascinating stuff.
DOUBLE-BILL: Pumped up for Hollywood, this sort of story gets ‘Pop’ sensibility as in PRIMAL FEAR/’96 (Richard Gere; Edward Norton. OR: With an Art House veneer from Iran, the shifting perspectives of Asghar Farhadi’s superb A SEPARATION/’11.
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