Coffee Blow: Movie Magic: Like Father Like Son

Like Father Like Son

Soshite Chichi Ni Naru

Release in Japan: September 28, 2013

121mins Genre: Drama

Writer/Director: Hirokazu Koreeda

Major Actors: Masaharu Fukuyama as Ryota Nonomiya, Machiko Ono as Midori Nonomiya, and Jun Eubuki as Nobuko Nonomiya

Plot Summary

Ryota is a hard-working business man with little time to spend with his family, and Midori is his wife and stays at home mother of their son Nobuko. The have great pride in their son when as he does well in the preschool interview and begins to take his first steps into his schooling. There is just one problem he didn’t pass his preschool blood test. The results of the blood test came back stating that Nobuko was not Ryota and Midori son, but whose son is he? Hirokazu has captured the tale of the old Japan were babies got switched in hospitals often, and a new style of family was born. In this classic tale of family, Hirokazu answers the age old questions of what makes a family a family, what make a parent a parent, and what makes a father a father.

Thinking of the meaning

It seems that Hirokazu wanted to depict this story as a documentary even though it is not and by using a mise en scène style of filming, he really gave the film flair. His natural style of lighting and real world scenes really helps the audience feel like they are part of these families and empathize with their story. He let the child actors improvise their lines and actions in the film for this same reason, having the children improvise their actions and words led to the adults having to improvise as well. They were told to act as if you would in real life. In an interview Hirokazu was asked why he used vertical and spiral as a tracking effect in his movie, and what he was trying to symbolize by that to which he replied, “I was not trying to symbolize anything by those scenes. Rather, those shots work to make the audience feel like the main characters do.”

He said that the movie was made to answer a question that was asked when talking to a colleague and to quote Kirokazu, “the question was whether blood relations make people fathers or time spent with kids.” He wanted to make people react to think, and maybe to change. He didn’t use flashbacks because he didn’t want to harm the flow of the movie. Instead of flashbacks he used photos in a camera to depict the child’s perspective. His new style of filmmaking is said to come from his experiences as a father with his daughter and growing, “ I just feel that I’m more attracted to the story of life, being alive, and trying to face life.” He wanted to leave the audience with the thought of a different way of doing things, and what they family should do next or will do next.