Kore-eda's World of Shattering Cinema

Kore-eda's World of Shattering Cinema

by Karenna Umscheid

photograph: Tokyo Weekender

Though it doesn’t garner as much hype as the likes of New York City and Los Angeles, the Boston film scene is still so rich with opportunity– as is the point of this blog, I suppose. Essentially all of my writing here is born out of an obsession with the small glimmers of celebrity that occasionally grace the Boston film scene.

Some of my most treasured memories in my few years in this city are owed to local film festivals and special screenings, from dancing in the aisles during Stop Making Sense to the indescribable buzz of excitement during a preview screening of The Boy and the Heron, to the chilly Massachusetts comradery in Eileen. This is why I yearn constantly for theaters like the Brattle and the Coolidge Corner Theater to release their upcoming film guides and screening schedules. For instance, last week, when I saw that the Brattle was doing a series featuring Hirokazu Kore-eda, I practically jumped up and down in excitement. 

My love for Kore-eda’s filmography began when I watched his 2018 Palme d’Or winner Shoplifters, an astounding achievement in cinematic melancholy and beauty, an anatomy of the so-called “found family.” It left me sobbing into the late hours of the night, an achievement only a select few films have reached. It remained in my Letterboxd “top four” for a long time and it’s still a favorite so meaningful to me that I will recommend it forever; I have yet to be disappointed by any other entry in Kore-eda’s filmography. I watched Still Walking with my dad, anchoring back my tears. I wandered endlessly over the complexities in Monster and felt my heart burst and shatter seeing Broker in theaters. I mulled for hours over my life and existence after watching After Life for the first time. 

Kore-eda’s narratives continue to shatter me, time after time, rewatch after rewatch. I wrote about his latest film, Monster, in an earlier blog post, praising the film’s challenging nature and making a case for the often understated beauty of international films that American and/or blockbuster perspectives often lack. Including this latest release, every aspect of his filmography, from the most awarded to the most slow and obscure, demonstrates the persistent glowing thread of humanity and the challenges to compassion throughout. All the films work exceptionally well in conversation with one another, touching on similar themes in different iterations, each one reworking the complicated fluxes of society, each one filled with tenderness and understanding. 

So despite the slog of midterms and the treacherous combination of wind and cold, this upcoming series serves – for me at least – as a reminder that there are still places to go and more movies to see. I deeply encourage everyone to, at the very least, watch just one of Kore-eda’s films; his empathetic (but not sappy or overly sentimental) auteurship is essential. 
The Kore-eda series at the Brattle Theater runs from March 15 until March 17, 2024.

Until next Wednesday,

Karenna