Post by Dracula on Feb 19, 2023 14:03:55 GMT -5
Broker(1/18/2023)
It’s become kind of difficult to keep up with the output of the filmmaker Hirokazu Kore-eda, who was seemingly putting out a movie every year before the pandemic slowed things down a bit. These days he seems to be on a bit of a run making movies outside of his native Japan as his last movie The Truth was made in France with an international cast and for his newest movie he has traveled across the Sea of Japan to work in South Korea, a decision I’m assuming was made because of that country’s history of overseas adoptions and seeming excess of orphaned children. The movie follows a pair of “brokers” in abandoned children who acquire children who’ve been left in “baby boxes” and try to find domestic adopted parents for them under the table. They are doing this for profit but also do view this as a calling and that they’re saving these children from being sent to overcrowded orphanages or foreign adopters. The most recent baby they’ve acquired proves more problematic for them as the baby’s mother re-emerges after having left her child in one of those boxes and finds her way to the brokers, at which point the three of them decide to go on something of a road trip to find adoptive parents for the baby, but unbeknownst to all of them, the police are on to their operation and are surveilling their actions this time around.
If there’s a major complaint to be made about Broker is that it sort of sees Kore-eda treading familiar ground. The film’s focus on marginalized people forming a chosen family of sorts around a low stakes criminal enterprise is very similar to Kore-eda’s Palme D’or winning Shoplifters and even has structural similarities with that film. Additionally the film’s focus on questions of what constitutes a family and how important genetic bonds really are is classic Kore-eda almost to the point of repetition. That having been said, Kore-eda remains a strong dramatist and has once again assembled a pretty interesting cast of characters to build his latest humanist slice of life around. Song Kang-ho remains a pretty strong actor and other characters like Lee Ji-eun as the mother of the soon to be handed off child are also well rendered and the film comes up with interesting ways to bond all these characters and build drama between them. The plot does take a bit of a turn for the melodramatic in the third act and the whole subplot with the detectives following them through this whole situation doesn’t quite ring true to me (seems like an odd allocation of resources) but otherwise this is a good if familiar exercise by Kore-eda, who I do hope comes to switch things up a little going forward.
***1/2 out of Five
It’s become kind of difficult to keep up with the output of the filmmaker Hirokazu Kore-eda, who was seemingly putting out a movie every year before the pandemic slowed things down a bit. These days he seems to be on a bit of a run making movies outside of his native Japan as his last movie The Truth was made in France with an international cast and for his newest movie he has traveled across the Sea of Japan to work in South Korea, a decision I’m assuming was made because of that country’s history of overseas adoptions and seeming excess of orphaned children. The movie follows a pair of “brokers” in abandoned children who acquire children who’ve been left in “baby boxes” and try to find domestic adopted parents for them under the table. They are doing this for profit but also do view this as a calling and that they’re saving these children from being sent to overcrowded orphanages or foreign adopters. The most recent baby they’ve acquired proves more problematic for them as the baby’s mother re-emerges after having left her child in one of those boxes and finds her way to the brokers, at which point the three of them decide to go on something of a road trip to find adoptive parents for the baby, but unbeknownst to all of them, the police are on to their operation and are surveilling their actions this time around.
If there’s a major complaint to be made about Broker is that it sort of sees Kore-eda treading familiar ground. The film’s focus on marginalized people forming a chosen family of sorts around a low stakes criminal enterprise is very similar to Kore-eda’s Palme D’or winning Shoplifters and even has structural similarities with that film. Additionally the film’s focus on questions of what constitutes a family and how important genetic bonds really are is classic Kore-eda almost to the point of repetition. That having been said, Kore-eda remains a strong dramatist and has once again assembled a pretty interesting cast of characters to build his latest humanist slice of life around. Song Kang-ho remains a pretty strong actor and other characters like Lee Ji-eun as the mother of the soon to be handed off child are also well rendered and the film comes up with interesting ways to bond all these characters and build drama between them. The plot does take a bit of a turn for the melodramatic in the third act and the whole subplot with the detectives following them through this whole situation doesn’t quite ring true to me (seems like an odd allocation of resources) but otherwise this is a good if familiar exercise by Kore-eda, who I do hope comes to switch things up a little going forward.
***1/2 out of Five
