Sure "Nobody knows" has an interesting premise with 4 children forced to live on their own and how they are coping with it. But I nearly fell asleep several times through the movie because the way of its storytelling (if you can call it that because it pretty much leads nowhere) is unbelievably slow. The movie starts of with the family moving into a new flat, at that point its just the single mom with the oldest son Akira who introduces herself to the landlord while the younger kids are smuggled in the flat in suitcases and oldest sister Kyoko arrives by train. You never quite get to know how things came to become like this... the kids are hidden and like the title says nobody knows about their existence because except for Akira who becomes kind of the caring father for the family no kid is allowed to leave the flat. From here on the movie just deals with their everyday routine... the mother, a prostitute as I expect, is absent more and more until she disappears and just sends cash by mail. She is depicted as a loving yet kind of childlike mother who can't take the responsibility.
The fathers are all different guys who are introduced shortly as non caring slackers but I never understood why these kids all don't go to school with their mother telling them they can't because they don't have fathers. A lot is left pretty wide open and I guess the mother is supposed to have some mental defect, otherwise the whole thing is pretty unbelievable. When she meets a man and disappears Akira finally becomes the father part of the family trying to cope with feeding the kids and taking care of the flat while finding some friends and trying to live a normal kids live which obviously fails in the less than normal surrounding. Bills don't get paid, the kids lose electricity and then water and try to get by getting water from a playground fountain and doing laundry there. Later in the movie they leave their flat but it seems like nobody cares if they do and honestly the viewer cares less too because the movie is so slow with so little dialog and some scenes stretched to a seemingly endless level. The characters sure are interesting, especially Akira and the sweet little Yuki amidst that mess she couldn't choose. It looks like Akira wants to keep the kids together because he fears they could be separated to several child homes if someone finds out.
But thats about all you know... the daily routine is getting more desperate, the state of the flat and the kids clothes is deteriorating and finally Yuki gets ill. What makes it hard to get into the movie beside the extremely slow pacing is that the kids are not depicted as a loving family but rather like just trying to get by. The barely talk and seem separate so their fun time strolls as well as Yukis dramatic burial (sure, you get a piece of drama too) seem distant and right then the movie ends. Mother keeps sending cash by mail, everything just goes on. I pretty much felt left down after watching this boring movie with an end like this. Seeing the 8point votes I really wonder if we watched the same movie because since the cinematography was rather average and the music close to non existing there is not much that makes me want to give more than 4points to this one. Only for people who are into slow artsy dramas with endless shots.
The fathers are all different guys who are introduced shortly as non caring slackers but I never understood why these kids all don't go to school with their mother telling them they can't because they don't have fathers. A lot is left pretty wide open and I guess the mother is supposed to have some mental defect, otherwise the whole thing is pretty unbelievable. When she meets a man and disappears Akira finally becomes the father part of the family trying to cope with feeding the kids and taking care of the flat while finding some friends and trying to live a normal kids live which obviously fails in the less than normal surrounding. Bills don't get paid, the kids lose electricity and then water and try to get by getting water from a playground fountain and doing laundry there. Later in the movie they leave their flat but it seems like nobody cares if they do and honestly the viewer cares less too because the movie is so slow with so little dialog and some scenes stretched to a seemingly endless level. The characters sure are interesting, especially Akira and the sweet little Yuki amidst that mess she couldn't choose. It looks like Akira wants to keep the kids together because he fears they could be separated to several child homes if someone finds out.
But thats about all you know... the daily routine is getting more desperate, the state of the flat and the kids clothes is deteriorating and finally Yuki gets ill. What makes it hard to get into the movie beside the extremely slow pacing is that the kids are not depicted as a loving family but rather like just trying to get by. The barely talk and seem separate so their fun time strolls as well as Yukis dramatic burial (sure, you get a piece of drama too) seem distant and right then the movie ends. Mother keeps sending cash by mail, everything just goes on. I pretty much felt left down after watching this boring movie with an end like this. Seeing the 8point votes I really wonder if we watched the same movie because since the cinematography was rather average and the music close to non existing there is not much that makes me want to give more than 4points to this one. Only for people who are into slow artsy dramas with endless shots.