Hirokazu Koree­da: ​‘I want to make vis­i­ble the peo­ple the gov­ern­ment ignores’

There are qual­i­ties both world­ly and tran­scen­den­tal to the work of Japan­ese film­mak­er Hirokazu Koree­da. Astute­ly observed social dynam­ics unfold with­in films shad­ed by melan­choly as light as a feather’s tick­le. Shoplifters, which won the Palme d’Or in Cannes this year, is per­haps his most heavy­weight work to date. Con­cern­ing a makeshift fam­i­ly liv­ing on the out­skirts of Tokyo, sur­viv­ing via a mixed bag of legal and ille­gal enter­pris­es, the film cap­tures the some­times fraught, some­times charm­ing dynam­ics of this domes­tic set-up, while gen­tly unfold­ing the mys­tery of how these peo­ple came to be each other’s centre.

We met Koree­da on a break from shoot­ing his next film, The Truth, star­ring Ethan Hawke, Juli­ette Binoche and Cather­ine Deneuve. He spoke about his delib­er­ate­ly dis­tant rela­tion­ship with the Japan­ese gov­ern­ment, his desire to rep­re­sent peo­ple whose lives are hid­den, how actress Saku­ra Andô brought her heart­break­ing char­ac­ter of Nobuyo to life, and his love of Ken Loach.

LWLies Did you study pro­fes­sion­al shoplift­ing methods?

Koree­da: Not through train­ing or prac­tice. I did look at CCTV cam­era footage of peo­ple shoplift­ing. I could see that some­times peo­ple come in groups or pairs so some­one is shad­ow­ing the shop staff. There’s some­body shoplift­ing and they’ll be some­one else hid­ing that from shop staff. That gave me a hint to use shad­ow­ing and obscur­ing the view from the staff, but noth­ing elab­o­rate, noth­ing special.

Can you explain the reac­tion of the Japan­ese gov­ern­ment to Shoplifters? I heard that Prime Min­is­ter Shinzō Abe was quite negative.

There wasn’t a for­mal response from the Japan­ese gov­ern­ment. The news was they hadn’t react­ed. The French news­pa­per Le Monde wrote some­thing about, ​‘Why hasn’t the Japan­ese Prime Min­is­ter invit­ed him to con­grat­u­late him for win­ning the Palme d’Or?’ Sort of iron­i­cal. A Japan­ese MP raised this which result­ed in the Cul­ture Min­is­ter say­ing, ​‘Maybe we should invite him for for­mal con­grat­u­la­tions.’ When they asked me, when the for­mal offer came, I said, ​‘No’. Their rea­son­ing was, ​‘This will encour­age film­mak­ing in Japan,’ but I said, ​‘If you want to do that, please give more pub­lic fund­ing to the film indus­try and sup­port it.’

Now this dis­pute exists, will it be hard­er for you to secure gov­ern­ment fund­ing for future films, or to make in films in Japan?

Prob­a­bly not. That’s a sep­a­rate thing. Or it should be. My stance is that pub­lic fund­ing for film is tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey, so films should be val­ued on their mer­it. It should be that if it’s a good film it’s pub­lic mon­ey com­ing back to the com­mu­ni­ty through the arts. But some peo­ple think that maybe the receiv­er of that fund­ing owes some­thing. Some crit­i­cism that I’ve received – main­ly online – is that you shouldn’t decline an invi­ta­tion, you owe some­thing to the gov­ern­ment, you must go and be thank­ful. But I think that’s very sep­a­rate from mak­ing a good film. If the film is good it deserves that fund­ing. I’m sure it’s the same with Ken Loach for I, Daniel Blake. I think he had sim­i­lar crit­i­cisms. I real­ly love Ken Loach and have a huge respect for him. Maybe I’ve got clos­er to him.

Do you feel like artists and film­mak­ers have a respon­si­bil­i­ty to chal­lenge the polit­i­cal establishment?

As an indi­vid­ual I do express my stance against gov­ern­ment poli­cies, about their law changes, secu­ri­ty and the rights of peo­ple. That’s pub­licly known and that’s noth­ing to do with film. As a film­mak­er it’s not that I want to make a film about that oppo­si­tion, it’s more about peo­ple com­mit­ting crimes or in pover­ty, the peo­ple that are an incon­ve­nience to the gov­ern­ment, who are not being seen, peo­ple we try to hide. My films try to make vis­i­ble the kind of peo­ple that the gov­ern­ment wants to for­get or ignore. I see my role as a film­mak­er as to make them more vis­i­ble rather than mak­ing a protest.

You’re more about human­is­ing peo­ple than demon­is­ing the establishment?

Yes.

Nobuyo is real­ly grate­ful for the hap­pi­ness she has known, even once it’s over. What inspired her character?

The char­ac­ter came from the actress, Saku­ra Andô. Her skill, her pow­er for portraying.

Does that mean that you were open to Andô tak­ing your script in dif­fer­ent direc­tions? Was there improvisation?

She’s an actress who is quite faith­ful to the script nor­mal­ly but while we were film­ing she came to me and said, ​‘The father wants to be called ​“dad” by the boy and what about my char­ac­ter? Would Nobuyo want to be called ​“moth­er”?’ I said, ​’Prob­a­bly she does but not so much.’ That prompt­ed me to think about what she thinks about want­i­ng to be called ​‘moth­er’ or not, so I added the scene with the boy and Nobuyo walk­ing through the shop­ping mall drink­ing the bot­tles where the boy asks her, ​‘Do you want to be called mum?’ So that came from the actress’s ques­tion to me.

That scene, when we filmed it, was real­ly good, which prompt­ed me to go to the ques­tion­ing-by-the-detec­tive room scene. I didn’t actu­al­ly write any script for that scene. All that hap­pened was she sat there with the police­woman. I gave the police­woman a note to say, ​‘What did your chil­dren call you?’ and it was com­plete­ly ad libbed on her part when she start­ed to cry in reac­tion to that ques­tion. I feel it was a nice exchange between the actress and myself in devel­op­ing that char­ac­ter, and that’s why I say she made a char­ac­ter. I feel that we cre­at­ed her together.

When you’re assem­bling an on-screen fam­i­ly, or in this case a makeshift fam­i­ly, what is your process for assem­bling the cast to make sure they have the right dynamic?

Audi­tions. For this par­tic­u­lar film I already had Kirin the grand­ma and the father, Lily Franky, in mind when I wrote the script so they were already cast. Nor­mal­ly for a fam­i­ly dra­ma they’ve been togeth­er for 20 or so years so you want to por­tray that. You look for com­mon­al­i­ty when you’re cast­ing a ​‘nor­mal’ fam­i­ly dra­ma. This one, they’re not relat­ed by blood, so I was more delib­er­ate­ly try­ing to have dif­fer­ences. Dif­fer­ent ways of speak­ing, dif­fer­ent ways of dress­ing, dif­fer­ent faces.

What draws you to keep using fam­i­ly dra­ma as the root of your storytelling?

As a film­mak­er I’m not sure to be real­ly hon­est, but with­in the last 10 years I’ve lost my moth­er and then I’ve had a child. So these are things that are close to my heart, that are real­ly imme­di­ate to me. It’s not as if I’ve got an adopt­ed child. No, I don’t, but there was a con­cern about, hav­ing had a child, think­ing: is it blood that makes the fam­i­ly? The films I’ve made with­in the last 10 years all stem from my per­son­al experience.

There’s so much food in Shoplifters…

All junk food!

Do any of your actors com­plain of weight gain?

Haha­ha. No, no.

How is The Truth About Cather­ine going and how is your French?

I’m hav­ing fun… Cather­ine Deneuve, Ethan Hawke, Juli­ette Binoche – so Japan­ese and French and Eng­lish are all spo­ken in the film. It’s a month-and-a-half since we start­ed film­ing, so it’s prob­a­bly about halfway through now. We’re hav­ing fun everyday.

Do you know what mem­o­ry you’d take with you to the afterlife?

It’s 20 years since I made that film. That used to be the reg­u­lar ques­tion in every inter­view 20 years ago! I used to say that I want­ed to remain in that film set. I’d only made two films at that point so I want­ed to stay there and con­tin­ue mak­ing mem­o­ry films of the peo­ple in that facil­i­ty. Now – 20 years on – I think I have to say the same thing. I want to remain in that facil­i­ty and con­tin­ue mak­ing films.

Shoplifters is released 23 Novem­ber. Read the LWLies Rec­om­mends review.