9.1/10
FilmFascination Rating
Delicate, grounded, emotional and touching would be the words that would describe this movie.
‘Like Father, like son’ was my second movie by Hirokazu kore – eda and this feels like a new world opened to me. Kore-eda has this gift to capture the beauty of little things in a family and brings something special through the child actors. Anyone who has previously seen any of Kore-eda’s work would know exactly what I am talking about.
It gives me immense pleasure to see a movie that stays connected with the audience and also stays strong from the plot perspective. This is one of those movies which will touch everyone personally and yet each one of the viewers in a different way.
5 years after raising their only child, Ryoto and Midori Nonomiya are told that their child is not their child at all. A hospital error switched their son at birth and the boy, Keita, they have been raising isn’t actually their son by blood. The way you look at things completely changes. I could only imagine how painful it would be for a parent to hear this news. The paintings made by your son, his photos with you, the way he talks which you thought resembled you – all your beliefs suddenly shatter.
What is the right thing to do in such a situation? No couple would want to face this heart-breaking decision of either keeping the boy they have been raising or exchanging him with their biological son. A swap seems obvious. But is that really that easy? What about all the memories and the bond they have with Keita? And what about the other family who has been raising their child? What are they going to do about it?
Ryusei, their biological son, has been living with the Saiki family. The Saiki’s could not be more different than the Nonomiya. They aren’t as well-to-do as the Nonomiya. But who are we kidding? Even Keita’s grandmother does not feel at home when she comes to the Nonomiya house. “It feels like a hotel”, she says. It is not only about the house. Ryoto is never home. He is the typical hard-working guy who does not have time for his family. Compared to that Midori feels like a wife who has been given the duty of raising their son. On the other hand, Ryusei has been living with two siblings in this cozy, connected house despite their limited means.
Yudai, the father of the Saiki family, lives by the motto ‘Put off to tomorrow whatever you can.’ He is a big kid himself as the mother says, “We have four kids in our family”.
Still, we see Ryoto’s love for Keita. The characters of ‘Like Father, Like Son’ aren’t painted black or white. The movie is even careful not to show Yudai as an ideal. The characters have a gray shade, like in real life. People cannot be segregated into good and bad. There is so much more to it. This movie knows that well.
The plot is interesting, but what matters is how everything is shown. Talking about the movie from the plot’s perspective would be like telling the gist of your life in a sentence or two. It wouldn’t give you any idea about how the movie makes you feel.
The little subtle movements, the small expressions on the face, and the change in emotions are what make this movie. The movie never rushes anywhere. It takes its time without any jerks of emotions. And still is subtly yet strongly moving. It is about paternal love and the bond between parents and their children. Especially in an Asian household, the first thing anyone says after meeting a child is how similar he looks to one of his parents. It has always been like that. The scene when Ryoto and Midori return from the DNA test, realizing that Keita is not their biological son is such a rush of emotions.
The greatest thing this movie achieves is how it makes us feel the emotions each character is going through (the actors also play a huge role). It does this by making us very close to each of the characters. In fact, they show the relationship between Keita, Ryota, and Midori within the first 10 minutes. Still, it was done so beautifully. I knew it was going to be hard to go through everything after those few minutes. Since I got so much connected with both the families and knew the bond between each of the members. The result was – I cared about what happened to them.
‘Like Father, like Son’ captures raw life moments. The fight between the couple, Ryoto explaining to Keita that going for a sleepover to the other family’s house is a mission, Keita practicing piano with his father, Ryusei’s bond with his parents and so much more. The movie explores emotions of parenthood and children so well that it feels like being part of a documentary showing the natural habitat of humans rather than well-devised direction. So many things are unsaid and still, they reach us, as viewers, so clearly. The moment when Ryoto comes to pick up Ryusei but doesn’t even meet Keita, we clearly understand Keita will get upset although we aren’t shown it. In the next scene, we see how Keita is hurt just by the way he behaves. In this sense, the movie goes a long way by being grounded by nature. The last film that made me feel raw emotions that was added to the ‘Great Movies’ list was Past Lives.
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