Nobody Knows

Rich with documentary observation and patient attention to detail, Hirokazu Kore-eda’s film is ultimately a fairy tale of abandonment, based on a real story set in modern Tokyo. Four children are left alone for months on end by a mother who is barely more than a child herself. The elder boy is 12 and takes responsibility for keeping his siblings together, though each has a different but equally useless father. The children’s gradual descent into a near-feral state is meticulously, intimately, and unblinkingly delineated, and would be unbearable to watch if the boys and girls were not so incredibly beautiful and the presentation was not so chaste. There are unreal elements and unanswered questions to the story, but it has a searching yet unforced quality, with a wide-eyed child-like persistence, that makes its running time of well over two hours not seem prolonged at all. Still, this is not most people’s idea of entertainment, and it was bold of Images to schedule it. (2004, Images, n.) *7* (MC-88, RT-95.)