Like Father, Like Son : Hirokazo Kore-eda

Being a father is a strange thing a man can process in his life as motherhood is more natural like one acquires it from one’s biological origin. But fatherhood is a creative path like one construct it through one’s actual and possible experience. The question is not how to become a father but what is a father? Rreversely, how does a child accept someone its father also a significant point in “Like Father, Like Son” 2013,   (そして父になる, Soshite Chichi ni Naru), directed by Japanese filmmaker Hirokazo Kore-eda.

Art forms are best till date to express and to represent the innate emotions circled around the familial relationships. Literature gives us the chance to filter the expression of characters as per our own imaginative lengths. But literature has its own descriptive limitations that occur immediately in a space and time frames. We can’t cross the bars as we have to stick to the reading durations and concentrations. But in films, the collaborators have the prospects to put together both the ambient and artificial elements on the screen through depth of fields, frames, compositions, cinematic angles, varied shots so and so.  An audience can view externally the projected screen but also read like a book page simultaneously. These factors thaat impress presumably my conciousness make me an ambitious appreciator of films from my childhood before being aware of the magic of literature. I wanted to be the daddy of film & literature, as Ryota Nonomiya (Masaharu Fukuyama) wished to be the father of Keita & Ryusei. I have been in a constant swapping mode since my teenage years. But nowadays I am thinking about no more pendulation, thus I want a complete unison of words and pictures.

 The first thing that startled me in” Like Father, Like Son" is its lighting compositions especially highlighted backgrounds (interview room in Keita’s school & earing Day in courtroom) and contrasted foregrounds (especially Nonomiya’s secluded time in front of office window & tensed interactions with Keita (adopted) & Ryusei (biological) along with the characters' positions in the frames. As though I saw the color temperatures were dancing with props movement (long spiral staircase shot, wide overhead shot in food court, tracking shots on walkway and tilting shots of elevators & the soothing soundtracks.

 The father's name is Nonomiya which is phonetically resembles with Bengali Mono Miya (মনু মিয়া) to me. This is the first time I have become deeply interested in Japanese language, though a glimpse of thought to learning reading comprehensibility in Japanese ran across my mind while I was planning to write a novel on Bengal famine in 1943 and Japanese soldiers had occupied Myanmar and entered forcefully in Chittagong city and American soldiers had tented in Calcutta city. And the mother's religious rituals seem quite Indian to me, as far as we know Fareast is converted to Buddhism which has adapted with native creeds.

 The whole narrative revolved recurrently on one base: what is the nature of parenting? Is being biological is essential to be a parent, in other words, is parenting natural fixation or a gradual construction, an adaptation and evolutionary process? There are two heart-wrenching scenes and sequences in the movie that have pushed me to rethink parenting in an artistic way. The first one, an embedded narrative where Ryota came across an entomologist in a man-made forest near his office and joined him. Ryota asked, pointing to a worm egg. Is this its natural habitat? The entomologist informed him though it’s not their place so it takes 15 years to be born but they have to adapt with the environment. The second one is when Ryoto scrolled his digital camera and recollected the stills taken by Keita. He knew what he felt for Keita but then he felt how Keita felt about him. The whole course of time he was in a dilemma whether he would rear both of them but by law he couldn’t so he chose for Ryusei. But Ruysei took Saiki for granted as his daddy. Nonomiya’s eyes full of tears and trembling lips and apple cords make the scene a brilliant inclusion of human raw feelings that we can’t notify with our bare eyes until a filmmaker like Kare-eda shows us through his cinematic third eyes. The scene of walking father and son side by side along the two diverged roads by the river is one of the modern classics in cinema.

 When I finished the last scene where son embraced father, I ended a cathartic journey in this blistering morning that left me in a cool tent contemplating the infinite possibilities of human experience. I anticipate my own father's feelings towards my siblings and nieces and nephews though I am not a married man yet thus I have no children of my own. All of my acquaintances have been pushing me to be married and having children of my own. But along with other reasons, I refuse to do so as I could not release myself from the feeling of being father to them.

I know my pattern of father feeling is not the norm in any one of the realities the others can think of; but I feel the same as Nonomiya has felt toward Keita that being father is a construction through one’s actual and possible experience.

Directing and dealing with the children are the most delicate artistic endeavors. But the more greater the artists the more higher the skills to work with children. They do it as adroitly as they do with the adults. In this respect, Kore-eda probably the greatest of them as far as I know. When I watch "Shoplifters", I didn't notify this side of Hirokazo. After Tarkovsky, Kore-ed is the director whose whole body of works I am going to watch till now 

 

Like Father, Like Son (2013)

そして父になる

Hirokazo Kore-eda

Japanese, Japan

PS: I watched "Like Father, Like Son" to have a taste of the representative film from each nominated director of the 2023 Cannes Film Festival.