the sleeping father
Hirokazu
Kore-eda (writer and director) Shoshite
chichi ni naru (Like Father, Like
Son) / 2013, USA 2014
Hirokazu
Kore-eda’s 2013 film, Like Father, Like
Son, seems, at first to be suggesting a deep resemblance between the film’s
central “father,” Ryota (Masaharu Fukuyama) and his 6-year old son, Keita.
Indeed in the very first scene, the wide-eyed child—New York Times critic Manohla Dargis described him as having
“enormous, startled-looking eyes”—placed squarely between Ryota and Keita’s
mother Midorino (Machiko Ono), appears, in his black, loosely chopped hair and
serious attentiveness, to be a piece with both parents, as he is intensely
queried by a series of adults in what we later grasp is an interview for
entrance to a wealthy private school. The child, coached by his “cram” teacher,
states that his father takes him camping in the summer.
Although Kore-eda’s work slowly builds up
to the reasons for Ryota’s distance, the plot of his film shifts suddenly and
radically early on when the couple suddenly receive a visit from hospital
authorities, where their child was born. Requesting that the couple receive a
DNA scan, the insensitive hospital representatives suggest that there may have
been error at the time of Keita’s birth, and that he has been mixed up with
another child born the same day, Ryusei (Shogen Hwang). Indeed tests confirm
their suspicions, and suddenly the seemingly happy, but already tense family is
forced to consider an exchange with the other family, Yukari (Yoko Maki) and
Yudai (Lily Franky). The Saiki family could not be more different than the
Nonomiyas, the former of which live in small quarters shared with their not
very successful appliance store. The father of three children, Saiki clearly
prefers parenting to working, and spends long hours with his children, his wife
reaffirming his somewhat childlike philosophy. Unlike the cautious, worried
Kieta, Ryusei is a rambunctious kid who loves his little brother and sister,
flies kites with his father, and spends long hours with his toys, which Saiki
magically repairs when they break.
With great tension, the two couples meet
on several occasions, the boys getting along remarkably well, “like they were
brothers,” while the parents eye one another suspiciously. As well they should,
since it quickly becomes apparent that to save them all from a Solomonic
decision, that the wealthier off Ryota hopes to take both boys into his family.
The loving Saikis are understandably outraged by his presumptions that they
might give up their beloved son.
A court trial reveals that a nurse,
vaguely responding to a grudge with her own husband and children, has purposely
switched the two children, which creates even greater rancor for the two sets
of parents. On this subject the film is intentionally unclear, and we never do
quite comprehend the nurse’s motives, but the facts merely throw salt into the
parents’ wounds.
Gradually, the two mothers, both
terrified of the prospect of giving up the children they have nurtured for so
many years, bond, while the men, reiterating their differences, continue to try
to find a way to manipulate one another. Ryota attempts to negotiate the
slippery slope between nature (the ties of blood) and nurturing, while Saiki
outwardly criticizes Ryota for not spending more time with his family. All of
this becomes even more fraught, as they attempt to “trade” children during the
weekends, testing both the parents’ and the childrens’ abilities to accommodate
the new realities. At first the boys take to the experiments as a kind of
adventure, although Ryota, once again, describing the exchange as a “mission”
to his son, has taken away some of the fun. Certainly, it might be said that
Keita has more “fun” at the Saiki house than at home. Ryusei, on the other
hand, is scolded for the way in which he holds his chopsticks, and is forced to
“the study” the problem by picking up plastic letters with the chopstick as he
baths.
The hospital representatives have argued
that, generally, when such situations occurred, the parents decided to
“exchange” children. And after a visit to Ryota’s own father, who argues that
as time passes each of the children will grow to look more and more like their
birth-parents, suddenly convinces Ryota, despite his wife’s protests, that a
permanent exchange is the best decision.
Meanwhile, both mothers become tormented
with the losses in their life. The relationship between Ryota and Midorino becomes
increasingly more tense, as he, so she feels, blames her for not recognizing
that Keita was not their son at birth, and blames himself for not having
perceived the “obvious,” suggesting that Keita has lived up to the father’s own
abilities. The visit to his father also begins to confirm to us that Ryota
hated his own father, and that the film’s title is not, necessarily, about him
and Keita, but Ryota and his selfish dad.
As I suggested earlier, all of these
feelings of guilt and frustration work themselves out, particularly in Ryota’s
case, very slowly, with the director allowing no simple resolutions to his
character’s situations. We cannot precisely know what Ryota is thinking, but we
clearly see his anguish, as he, once again, attempts to escape his house, even
temporarily abandoning his work. And, more than anything else, he sleeps. If he
has never truly been at home in his house, he is now like a depressed being,
unable to even try to explain to Keita anything about the momentous change in
his life that will soon take place. Once again, he breaks the news to the boy
by aligning it with responsibility, a “mission.”
Although both sets of parents attempt to
welcome and love their switched children, neither boy is entirely happy with
the results. Keita at least has a family who play and even bathe together, and
his new father and mother lovingly try draw him out of his lonely anger with
games. Ryusei, on the other hand, like Keita before, is mostly left alone to
try to comprehend the vast changes in his environment. When Ryota demands that
he call him and Midorino mother and father, the child can only ask, over and
over, “why,” their inexplicable logic bringing the same question to his lips in
something close to terror. When his toy ray-man breaks, Ryota cannot fix it,
only commanding him to ask Midorino to buy him a new one.
Slowly Ryota, comprehending his own
failures, tries to awaken himself from his slumbers, constructing a tent with
the boy’s bedroom, the three of them pretending to camp out under the stars.
For the first time in their lives, they actually “play” with their child,
rushing about the apartment to shoot each other dead. But that is just the
problem, the love the boy has known is “dead.” As Ryota again sleeps, Ryusei
makes an escape, the small child taking a train to his family so that he might
once more fly a kite.
Ryota returns to the Saiki house to pick
up his “new” son, Keita hiding from the man, who as Midorino finally expresses
it, has “betrayed” him. The increasing hostility between Ryota and his wife, as
well as his own growing perceptions, brings him finally to tears when he
accidently discovers a series of photographs Keita has unknowingly taken of
him—all of them while the father was asleep. His photographs reveal an abiding
love, almost an obsession, of a man-in-missing. Not only has he betrayed his
son, he has seldom been there for him as a loving father. Like Ryota’s own father,
he has been a selfish, unlovable man.
Los Angeles,
January 27, 2014
Reprinted
from Nth Position [England] (February
2014).
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