Like Father Like Son: Thicker Than Blood

This weekend it'll be Father's Day. Compared to Mother's Day, this day is quite gone unnoticed in my opinion. To fully appreciate this day, I watched a Japanese movie together with Dahlia recently, Like Father Like Son. I was left speechless after the movie.

Sometimes I love to watch Japanese movies. Their strength is not on action or CGI, but on the storytelling. Since most of the actors usually are not recognizable, I feel the story to be more sincere compared to their Western counterparts.

The movie deals with the issue of baby switching and fatherhood. Ryota Nonomiya is a successful architect who have a six year old boy, Keita. He is quite strict with Keita regarding his studies. Always training the piano in the evening and even send him to a private school. Even the beginning of the movie started with Keita's entering exam to the private school.

The seemly happy family was shattered when they received the call from the hospital where Keita was born. Investigation found that Keita was switched from another family, the Saikis. The Nonomiya's actual son is Ryusei who being living with the Saikis all these times.

Right from the start the conflicting situation that father and his wife faced was shown. The viewers also being drawn to the contrasting atmosphere of the Nonomiya family and the Saiki family. While the Nonomiya came from the upper class family, the Saiki is only from the middle class family. Even the father's attitude is different. While we were shown that Ryota have a high expectation to his kid, Yudai Saiki (the father) is an unambitious shopkeeper who have a motto of "never do today what you can put off tomorrow". 

Watching a Japanese movie, sometimes one must be mindful of the message that it want to deliver in their conversations. I found that on this movie, it is heavy with the Japanese courtesy. There are no shouting or angry scene, but subtly it is shown that Ryota is being angry with his mother-in-law and also his father. Even when he is arguing with his wife, Midori - it was done in a low-key argument.

 

Baby switching issues is not really a problem in Malaysia thankfully, but in Japan it was a problem in the 60s. One of the most highlighted story was about a 60 years old man who found that he is actually a son from a wealthy family. Since he faced a lot of hardship in life, understandably he was very angry with the hospital. Try google "baby switching japan".

A Japanese man born to wealthy parents grew up in poverty after being given to another couple in a hospital six decades ago, while the infant who took his place went to live a privileged life of private tutoring, university and is today head of a property firm.

The man had to study at night-school while working day shifts in a factory before finding steady employments as a driver with a transport company. He never married and helps take care of three men who are not his brothers, including one who has suffered a stroke. 

Speaking to media in Tokyo, the man condemned to a life of hardship described his shock at learning the people he grew up believing to be his parents and brothers were unrelated to him.
“I wondered how on earth this could have happened,” he said. “I could not believe it. To be honest, I did not want to accept it.”

I found it strange that in the movie, the society tend to blame Midori (the wife) when the problem arises. To them, the mother should be able to distinguished his son based purely on her maternal instinct alone. Here's the thing. This happened in a place where 99% of the society came from the same race. Plus all babies looks the same. They are still scrunchy, doesn't really looks anything like their parents and they only will resemble their parents when they becoming kids.

Ryota always found that Keita doesn't achieve his high expectation but when Ryusei who considerably more clever come into his life, ironically it brings him some trouble. He kept asking the reasons why he should follow Ryota's rules when previously Keita had been following it religiously. One time out of boredom and longing to the Saikis, Ryusei had ran from home and went to the Saiki's. Evidently, the apple doesn't fall far from the tree since Ryota also had an episode of running away from home when he was a kid. 

The director of this move is the renowned Kore-eda Hirokazu, who actually had been directing some family oriented movies in the few years before. Even this movie is a Jury Prize Winner in Cannes Film Festival 2013. He saved the last moment of the movie to give a lasting impact to the viewers. The scene when Ryota inspect the photos Keita took previously had significant impact. I already felt butterfly in my stomach. Dahlia already sniffed there were tears in her eyes.

Fatherhood is thicker than blood.

It is hard to find a great family movies these days and this Japanese movie a rare gem. It is shown in the movies currently. Do catch it if you find the time.

Alhamdullilah