Still Walking | Hirokazu Kore-eda

[Paul Malcolm:] Good evening everyone. Welcome to the Billy Wilder Theater, home of the public programs for the UCLA Film & Television Archive. My name is Paul Malcolm. I'm the programmer at the Archive. Thank you all for coming out to the latest screening in Hirokazu Kore-eda: Cinema from the Outside In, a citywide series dedicated to the work of Japanese master Hirokazu Kore-eda. This program began earlier this week with a screening of director Kore-eda's "Nobody Knows" at the USC Ray Stark Theatre, which we followed last night with a screening of his "After Life" at the Downtown Independent. We will conclude this series with two more screenings here at the Wilder as the program moves over to the Westside. Director Kore-eda will return here again tomorrow night for our screening of his debut fiction feature "Moborosi". And he - while he will depart back to Japan on Sunday morning, in Sunday evening, we will be presenting his film "Air Doll" as well. So please check our website. Tickets are available for both of those screenings. Tonight we are very pleased to present writer/director Kore-eda's sixth fiction feature film "Still Walking" from 2008. It has been a great honor and privilege to be able to host director Kore-eda here in Los Angeles at all of these screenings. It takes a number of partners to make a series like this possible, so I want to take a moment to thank them now. The series as a whole is being presented and supported by the Yanai Initiative for Globalizing Japanese Humanities at UCLA and Waseda University. So, please help me thank them for making all of this possible. [audience applause] I want to give a special thank you to the Yanai Initiative's Professor Michael Emmerich, not only for everything he's done to make this series possible but everything he's done to help us present all of the Japanese programming we've been doing here at the Wilder over the last two years. So Professor Emmerich, thank you very much for that as well. [audience applause] Additionally, I'd like to thank our partners in this program: the Japan Foundation, Los Angeles; the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences; and the USC School of Cinematic Arts, with a special shout out to Professor Akira Lippit there; as well as the UCLA Terasaki Center for Japanese Studies. Another round of applause. [audience applause] One more thank you to Acropolis Cinema. Acropolis Cinema is a local, art house, independent, international, screening organization in Los Angeles. We're very happy to be partnering with them for the first time for two of the screenings in the series. They are co-presenting - they co-presented "After Life" at the Downtown Independent and they'll be co-presenting "Maborosi" tomorrow night. So, director Kore-eda began his career in the early 1990s making documentaries for Japanese television including "Lessons from a Calf", "However..." and "August Without Him". His fiction feature debut "Maborosi" premiered at the Venice Film Festival in 1995. He followed this extraordinary debut with a series of powerful, captivating films that looked at family, grief, loss and memory in contemporary Japan, that earned him critical accolades and numerous awards at major international film festivals, including "After Life", "Distance", "Nobody Knows", "Hana", "I Wish", "Like Father, Like Son" and his most recent film to release theatrically here in the United States, last year's "After the Storm". It's been really an honor to have him here with us. So please help me welcome to the stage, director Hirokazu Kore-eda. [audience applause and cheering] Our interpreter for the evening is David Neptune. [audience applause] [Kore-eda, in Japanese] [Interpreter:] Good evening. [Kore-eda, in Japanese] [Interpreter:] First of all, I feel really honored to be here tonight. Thanks to the help from many people, I'm able to be here in the name of a theater that is a director that I really respect. So first of all, thank you very much for having me. [audience applause] [Kore-eda, in Japanese] [Interpreter:] So, this film I wrote after my mother passed away. She was in the hospital for two years before that time and when she passed I felt like I couldn't do anything for her and I had a lot of regret. So, during that time, over about a month, I wrote this film. And by writing it, I wouldn't say as much as that I was trying to get over it, but at least I was trying to process the grief. [Kore-eda, in Japanese] [Interpreter:] When this, when this film was finished, my sales agent who I work with a lot said, "Oh, I think this film is too domestic, and only Japanese people will really get this film." And I thought, "Oh well, that's, you know, that's how it goes." But this film actually is probably the film out of all of my films that was shown the most all over the world and reached the widest audience, so you never know, it's difficult to tell where films are gonna end up. [Kore-eda, in Japanese] [Interpreter:] So, I'll stop it here. I'll be back here for a Q&A after the film as well. So, really looking forward to speaking with you all, if you'd like to stay. And thank you very much and enjoy the film. [audience applause] [Malcolm:] Please do stay for the Q&A. Please turn off all of your cell phones and enjoy "Still Walking". [Malcolm:] Well, thank you again for being here with us. I wanted to actually go back to your introduction to start. The first thing that you said or one of the things that you said was that you were surprised or you felt that this was a film about a Japanese family and that it might not speak to audiences outside of Japan. But it did and you found that audiences were having a very strong response to it for their own very personal connection to the film. I'm curious if that - how that informed or influenced the way you think about the relationship between the local and the universal, and maybe the role or the nature of cinema itself, in bridging those two things? And finally, what if anything, might someone like myself born and raised in America, but still loving this film, and feeling very personally connected to it, might I be losing in translation regardless? [Kore-eda, in Japanese] [Kore-eda laughs and audience laughter] [Kore-eda, in Japanese] [Interpreter:] So, like you were saying, I thought in the beginning that, "Oh, this is gonna be too domestic, and oh well," but I think Toronto was the first city that this film was screened outside of Japan. And then in San Sebastian. And people laugh at the funny moments. And I had a bearded man in Spain come up to me and say, "How is it that you know my mother?' [audience laughter] And in Sao Paolo is the same thing. Someone in Korea said the same thing. So I thought, "Oh maybe mothers are kind of universal." And I had come from a documentary background, so I really try to incorporate society as part of the worldview. And after that sort of became a theme for me personally, then I decided to, after this film, really work that into my films. And that was kind of a change that I experienced through this film. [Malcolm:] Is there anything in the film that may be so specifically Japanese in terms of, maybe the relationship to grief or memory or past, that might still need some explanation for non-Japanese viewers? [Kore-eda, in Japanese] [Kore-eda, in Japanese] [Interpreter:] So, I do wonder if - what in this film would be kind of difficult to understand for a non-Japanese audience. Nowadays, if I do identify something in my films that I think, "Oh, maybe this would be hard for a non-Japanese audience," I don't take it out. I keep that in there. But I think the butterfly is something. In Southeast Asia, I think butterflies often are thought of to carry the spirits of the deceased. And so that idea I've noticed, is sort of universal in Asia. [Kore-eda, in Japanese] [Kore-eda, in Japanese] [Kore-eda, in Japanese] [Interpreter:] The father character, the actor has actually passed away. But I heard from his wife that there was a butterfly at his funeral. So that was kind of a thought-provoking detail for me. [Kore-eda, in Japanese] [audience laughter] [Kore-eda, in Japanese] [Interpreter:] The story that the white butterflies come back after the winter as, as yellow butterflies was actually a story my mother told me. But I found out that it was a lie. They're completely different species. [audience laughter] [Malcolm:] Well, speaking of your mother you mentioned in your introduction that you began working on this film just a month or so after her passing. And the film itself is so much about the long shadow of loss and absence, and even years after the loss of theirs, the family's, the loss of their son in the film, they're still trying to figure out what it means to them, still wrestling with his absence. I'm curious, so soon after your mother's passing, how much negotiation the son and the filmmaker, you know, in you, had to negotiate, in terms of what to reveal, what not to reveal? And how if that negotiation did occur in that process, how that might have shaped the film that we saw today, in the writing of it? [Kore-eda, in Japanese] [Kore-eda, in Japanese] [Kore-eda, in Japanese] [Interpreter:] So, Abe in the film, that was the first time I worked with him. And with Kiki Kirin as well. That was the first time I worked with her. For Abe's character, do I overlap myself with his character? Not really. But what was kind of from my own experience, is that my relationship with, or the fact that things weren't going well with his father overlaps with my life which in my father's later years, he had bad legs and couldn't walk very well. And specifically, he always would walk ahead of the family. And if we lagged behind he would be frustrated with how slow we were. And so... But then in his later years, it was sort of the opposite and the family intentionally slowed down to keep pace with him. And so that's why I wrote in that scene where he, at the end, acts like he's getting a phone call, so that he can let his father kind of go ahead a little bit and catch up to him. So that was a big influence, for sure. [Kore-eda, in Japanese] [Interpreter:] So, often times, I don't really directly overlap myself with characters in my films. But it's more like vignettes or pieces of memories that I incorporate. So, for instance, my mother's - this is a very personal story, but my, my mother's brother lost his child, his son, when he was very young. And so when I would go to their family for, their family's house for New Year's, they would always see their son's shadow in me. And so it was really, that was a really heavy experience for me as a kid. And so that's not directly in the film necessarily but, sort of the, the thoughts of - that the mother keeps having and in thinking of her lost son and that sort of thing, comes from some of those experiences. [Malcolm:] There's obviously a lot of, you know, we're talking about loss. We're talking about grief. We're talking about regrets. But there's also a really wonderful lightness to this film and airiness, and, and an openness, and so much of that seems to be a part of the location where you shot the film, which has this amazing topography too. The hills, the stairs, the view of the sea. Did you have that place in mind, when you were writing the script? Or did you find that in the process of location scouting ? And could you talk a little bit about that place and how it also might have shaped the film in your shooting? [Kore-eda, in Japanese] [Interpreter:] One thing is that as, as the son of a filmmaker, who is the son of a mother who recently passed away. I didn't want the film to just be heavy and sad. So I definitely consciously thought about some of the characteristics as my mother, who was very dry and light and that sort of thing, so that was one thing. [Kore-eda, in Japanese] [Kore-eda, in Japanese] [Kore-eda, in Japanese] [Interpreter:] I'm trying to remember. I don't remember exactly but, but actually what it was is because the older brother dies in the ocean that was, that was something that I had written before we found the location. And so I think that was why I chose Mizube [?] And it wasn't that I necessarily had a light and airy location in mind specifically, but I did have an idea that I wanted the grave to be up high with a view of the ocean. So I used the stairs a lot, as you can tell. There're the stairs, and the going up and down, is, is a thing that comes up a lot in this film. And each time they go up or down, every character sort of has a different experience of that and takes something different out of, out of that moment. So, you know, for - like from the bus stop to the house, from the house up to the grave, that sort of thing. [Malcolm:] You had said in the Q&A at "Nobody Knows" that you don't - I can't remember what, how it came up but that you - it came up in the Q&A that you don't drive and that you tend to walk or take the train somewhere and I - that you also had it - so because of that you had it - it was difficult or it's difficult for you to write characters or write scenes of people driving or write characters while they drive. I was struck by that because, of course, we're watching a film tonight, at least in its English translation is titled "Still Walking". There's a lot of walking in the film. There's a lot of shots of trains which is fantastic. But, I'm very curious because the walking, the rhythm of the film is so delicate. The rhythm of the film feels also so grounded. I have this - I've just this weird question. I'm wondering if the, the pacing of this film and the pacing of your films in general, if you might - there's a link between the way you move through the world on trains and walking and the way your films are paced, which keeps them so grounded and so human feeling. [Kore-eda, in Japanese] [audience laughter] [Interpreter:] I guess so. [Kore-eda, in Japanese] [Kore-eda, in Japanese] [Interpreter:] This doesn't have to do really with what you're talking about, but [Malcolm:] Of course not. [laughter] [Interpreter:] The mother in the film says how she dreams of her son one day driving her to go shopping. And that was actually my mother's dream as well and she would always tell me that, the same thing. And when it was - she was sort of nearing the end of her days and she was bedridden, when I would visit her she would say, "Okay. I think it's about time to go shopping. You can, you can take me now." And I wasn't really sure if she was saying it intentionally or if she was really sort of losing her memory and, and that sort of thing. But I never actually got my license before she passed and so that was a huge regret for me. And in the end of this film, our character seems to have gotten a license and drives his family. But for me, my wife still drives me around. [audience laughter] [Malcolm:] I also always think about "Still Walking" as one of the great food films. There's so many great scenes of cooking. There's so many great scenes of eating. Can you talk a little bit about, I don't know, even the specific foods that we're seeing? And how you maybe built the film around these scenes, which was just so fantastic? [Kore-eda, in Japanese] [Interpreter:] I wonder what to say. [Kore-eda, in Japanese] [Kore-eda, in Japanese] [Interpreter:] I think that corn tempura is the, one of the biggest things in this film and that was something that my mother used to make all the time and I loved it. I haven't really heard of it very much outside of my family, but apparently it originates from Shogen cooking in Kyoto. And - originally. And, we - but we always had that in our family and the sound of the popping corn was always a sign that "Oh, this is, you know, cooking is happening in the kitchen." And in, now, I think it's not as common to make tempura at home. I think it used to be and so for people of a certain age and older I think this is - it very - it really stimulates memories of those kinds of home cooking moments. [Malcolm:] Turning to the cast, which is multi-generational, and they all, everyone just gives fantastic performances, very natural performances. Do you - what's your process with working with an actor or actress in terms of developing their character? And do you allow - it, everything feels so natural. Is there a lot of improvisation on set? Or is everything sort of follow the script exactly? [Kore-eda, in Japanese] [Interpreter:] For this movie, it's, it's almost all entirely exactly as the script. [Kore-eda, in Japanese] [Kore-eda, in Japanese] [Kore-eda, in Japanese] [Interpreter:] So... in, in a few of the scenes there were some discoveries that I made and I would sort of incorporate them. Like for instance, in that scene where they're peeling the edamame and she says, you know, "You're a beautiful woman. Show your forehead more." And brushes aside her hair with her, you know, her dirty hands. And that was something that they were doing as if it was like a comedy routine in their, their waiting room. And I saw that and I thought, "Oh, I want to put that in the film someplace," and, and then later it happens again when You's kids come and, and she sort of parts their hair. So I thought that was a nice sort of repetition. And I often like to take these candid moments and use them in the films but - in, in films - but a lot of, some actors will get angry if I take, take too many of them. So, for instance, the woman who's remarried to our main character in this film is - basically I asked her, the actress, what would be the most upsetting to you if you were to go to your mother-in-law's house and she were to ask you? And she said, "I think it would be something like, you know, pointing out a dimple or something like that," and I just directly wrote it in and she was not happy with me, [audience laughter] when I did that. But - the something like that like pointing out someone's, a woman's charm kind of a thing, I felt was by an in-law would be a really unpleasant, uneasy sort of experience if you were visiting your new husband's family, kind of a thing. Maybe that's kind of a Japanese feeling, so I'm not sure if it translates. But I do that sort of things a lot. So I relentlessly observe my actors in candid moments. [Malcolm:] You're also, I think, one of the great directors of children. You get such amazing performances from children in all of your films. And I think you're also one of the great filmmakers of childhood, the way you capture its resilience, its playfulness, its seriousness, its adaptability. Children and childhood always seem to be very strongly present, even if they're in the background of your family films. So I, you know, on a very practical level what, what kind of, you know, how do you go about directing children? How do you get these really nuanced performances or these sort of unself-conscious performances from the children? And then, then we'll ask, I'll ask the second question after he answers that one, yeah. [Kore-eda, in Japanese] [Interpreter:] So, I - ever since "Nobody Knows" and I did this with that film as well. I don't give the child actors a script. So, for this film that was also the case, so I would just tell them things like, "We're going to Grandma's house." [Kore-eda, in Japanese] [Interpreter:] And so when, when I'm on set I'm basically there next to the kids just sort of whispering in their ear, what's about to happen. For instance, when the kid has his hand touched by the grandpa, I'm telling him, you know, "Okay, this is gonna happen, and this is kind of how you deal with it." [Kore-eda, in Japanese] [Kore-eda laughs] [Kore-eda, in Japanese] [Interpreter:] And the kid in this, he's a really great boy. When I first met him was in a family restaurant and he actually did what he did here, which is he mixed Coke and ginger ale and brought it to our table. And I thought, "Wow, he's a really calm kid, but he's still very, you know, youthful. He's childish, he's playful." [Kore-eda, in Japanese] [Interpreter:] So, it's - I don't necessarily have them just be as they are, but I try to learn their vocabulary. So, and that doesn't always go well, but what I try to do is I try to experiment with them in auditions and try and find out what they're - how to, how to pull out their personality the best. And so I use that a lot during the shoot as well. [Kore-eda, in Japanese] [Interpreter:] So it all pretty much came from experience. I learned that, you know, giving a child the script and telling them to memorize the words and doing that doesn't work as well as just telling them so they can hear, hear it in their ears, and then they just regurgitate, you know, verbally. And that all came from a lot of experimentation. And I think it's also something that's used a lot in Kabuki in Japan as well as Rakugo. It's a very sort of oral genre, I think. So in film, I've noticed that as well and in the film "Kramer Kramer", I think the kid in that is really great and watching the making of some of, some of that film, I saw that the A.D. would basically explain the scene every day to, to him and, and they would basically work on the scene that way. [Malcolm:] I just have one more question, then we'll turn it over to the audience. One of the things that's so beautiful about this film is the way that the presence of children, these multi-generational family members evoke the past and the future, the present, which they all seemed sort of trapped in. The way there's all these little triggers for memories, shucking the corn, this, this, this, the song, obviously. The, the parallels between these two generations when the son remembers the wrestler's name and the mother remembers the wrest-, the wrestler's name, separately. It's in this one house in one day, you seem to capture so many different registers of life. The film is so delicately structured around that. So anyway, I feel like it always, it all leaves us feeling neither happy nor sad. I don't think melancholy is quite the right word for it. I don't think bittersweet is even a good word for it in English. This quality of, I don't know, joyful ambiguity that this, all of this, you know, seems to trigger. Is there, is there a particular feeling or a particular word that, and maybe a Japanese word might better describe this feeling that we're left with in terms of the li-, the moment in life that we've just seen? It's a very abstract question, but this feeling is so precise, but also so sort of difficult to pin down. [Kore-eda, in Japanese] [laughs] [Interpreter:] You mean, in my words? [Malcolm:] Yes. My words are pointless. [laughs] [Kore-eda, in Japanese] [Kore-eda, in Japanese] [Kore-eda, in Japanese] [laughter] [Interpreter:] He's gonna think of something better while I translate. But the first part of the answer is just that, I mean, what I intentionally did was to try and fold multiple different times into just this one day. And so, for instance, when the grandfather touches the little boy's hand and says, you know, "You have great hands to be a doctor," and the son sees that and gets angry, that was kind of because I felt like he probably, that probably happened to him when he was young. And so, it's like, you know, one character does something to another where maybe a memory does the same thing to another character. And so that sort of parallel progression of time was intentional and I wanted that to be part of the film. [Kore-eda, in Japanese] [Kore-eda, in Japanese] [Kore-eda, in Japanese] [Kore-eda, in Japanese] [Interpreter:] So the feeling that you're left with after the film is over I think is, maybe it's something that is hard to describe in words and maybe doesn't need to be described with words. But what I wanted to say with this film is that everything that happens in this film is after something has ended, like losing someone or getting remarried or even the death of the parents happens after the movie. And so all these sort of typical peaks of a film, I decided to exclude all of them and so it's kind of like there's no ripples on this ocean. There's, it's, it's calm, but if you get really close then you see the ripples on the surface of the water. So that was kind of a goal that I had in mind when I, when I made the film. I'm not sure if that's a good answer. [Malcolm:] It's a wonderful image, I think. Let's turn it over to the audience. We have mics, so when I call on you, wait for the mic to come to you. Let's go way in the back. Let's start in the back on this side. Woman in the back of the, third row from the back. [Woman in audience, in Japanese] [Woman in audience:] I really really like your films and I remember watching your films were - was my first influence on understanding cinema. And I remember you talking about how you first watched the Taiwanese New, New Wave films like Hou Hsiao-Hsien films. How you're really influenced by him and so by that time, I watched a lot of you guys' films and, and just feel like "Ah, this is the way you show through the language." And my question is, since you started from documentary, how do you think the way you understand [...] observe into how you make the films, from your first one to "After the Storm"? How do you think the way you use cinema, the language, and or even to observe the way you observe, how do you think it changes, changes through time? And if you're still to explore from now, how do you think you'll change your way? Or what are the new things you, you'll explore with the language? Thank you. [Kore-eda, in Japanese] [Interpreter:] Whether the way I observe things has changed essentially, is what you're asking? [Kore-eda, in Japanese] [Kore-eda, in Japanese] [Interpreter:] I think that, I think that it has changed. Its, but it's not a conscious thing. It just kind of is. In this film, for instance, his parents are alive and I was making this film from the son's perspective. But when I became a father myself, I started to look at children in a different way from a parent's perspective. So, I started making films as well and observing things from that point of view. So I think it just happens naturally and, and that definitely affects my films. [Kore-eda, in Japanese] [Kore-eda, in Japanese] [Interpreter:] I keep in mind when documentary filmmaking not to judge whether someone saying something is right or wrong or saying, "Oh, what this person is saying is very really wrong, so they should suffer," or "what this person is saying is very right, so they should go to heaven." Like that. And that's, that's kind of like playing God if you, if you judge someone for what they're saying, so I avoid that at all costs. And I try to use that approach with my fiction filmmaking as well. [Kore-eda, in Japanese] [Kore-eda, in Japanese] [Interpreter:] I think there's, you know, there aren't a lot of people who are tremendously great or tremendously bad in this film and in my films in general. I think I like having people who are real, like people who are around me in my real life, and that's my sort of ideal approach and that's how I want to continue to make movies. [Malcolm:] Question from the audience. Let's go right here in front. [Woman #2 in audience:] You mentioned that there are a lot of autobiographical elements to this. So I was wondering, with regard to casting the mother and grandmother whether there were specific goals in mind? [Interpreter:] I'm sorry I didn't catch the last part of the question. [Woman #2:] With regard to casting the mother, grandmother whether there were specific goals in mind. [Kore-eda, in Japanese] [laughs] [Kore-eda, in Japanese] [Interpreter:] In terms of the grandmother, Kiki Kirin, she is the kind of person that I used to watch in TV dramas when I was a kid and since she was in her 30s herself, she would play grandmothers. And so before I even became a director, I knew that I wanted to make a film with her and so I wrote the role in specifically for her, in this film. So, if, if she hadn't accepted the role, I don't know if the film would have gotten made. [Malcolm:] Let's go in the back, here. On this side. In the yellow sweater. [Woman #3 in audience:] Thank you for this beautiful film. Can you talk about your editing process, for this one? And how - and the balancing of so many perspectives in a multi-generational family drama. [Kore-eda, in Japanese] [Kore-eda, in Japanese] [Interpreter:] The question is how I maintained the balance? [Kore-eda, in Japanese] [Kore-eda, in Japanese] [Interpreter:] It wasn't a very conscious thing. [laughter] [audience laughter] [Kore-eda, in Japanese] [Kore-eda, in Japanese] [Interpreter:] I really didn't. [Kore-eda, in Japanese] [Kore-eda, in Japanese] [Interpreter:] So in, in the edit, I definitely had certain combinations in mind. Like for instance, the sushi guy delivering the sushi. That was something that happens about 25 minutes in and this is - that sort of cues the audience in that this, this is like a special event where they're celebrating the day of the death of their, of their family member. And so, and then I also knew that about one hour in that the... the daughter and her family was going to go away from the story and then it would be just the main actors that you're, the main characters that you're left with. So that sort of overall flow was already envisioned. [Kore-eda, in Japanese] [Kore-eda, in Japanese] [Interpreter:] One of the really important moments I think in the film is when the kids go outside and look at the flowers. And what timing to have that happen was important and we sort of experimented with that in the editing because I knew that there was a certain point where the pressure was gonna need to be relieved. [Malcolm:] From the audience, let's go right over here, gentleman at the front. Wait for the microphone to come down. Yeah. It's right behind you. [Man in audience, in Japanese] [Interpreter:] The question is, in your writing, it seems like there's a lot of ways you can approach writing and a lot of your films deal with very daily mundane activities, but there's absolutely no excess. There's just a great, it's just great. And so how do you do that? How do you... how do you write and how do you come up with those kinds of stories? [Kore-eda, in Japanese] [audience laughter] [Interpreter:] Thank you very much. [Kore-eda laughs] [Kore-eda, in Japanese] [Kore-eda laughs] [Interpreter:] When my mother was hospitalized, up until that point, we, we would barely see each other in a year. And, and because she was in the hospital and to sort of avoid her going senile, losing her memory, we talked a lot. We talked about my childhood and how everything went. And whenever we talked I would write down what we're talking about in a notebook and I would leave that by her bedside. And my older sister would come and she would look at what was written in the book and then continue on to those memories and continue writing. And so we did that for two years and we ended up with seven notebooks. So one of the memories in there, of course, was the tempura and that sort of thing. So all of these little pieces were really significant. And even on a daily basis, I, I keep a notebook with me that I write in if I'm on the train or something like that, I'll keep notes on my cell phone and then, and then transfer that onto my notebook and that sort of very mundane practice is what I do. [Kore-eda, in Japanese] [Kore-eda, in Japanese] [Interpreter:] I really appreciate the comment that you think that there's no excess in my scripts. What I do a lot is that I, I never start at the beginning of a conversation, and I never end a scene at the end of a conversation. So it's always the middle part, but just the right part where that gives you the, the, enough information that you know what's going on, which I think is the same case with the guy who delivers the sushi in this film. [Malcolm:] Another question from the audience. Let's go right here on the aisle. [Man #2 in the audience:] I was curious about - you've referenced memory many times in many of your answers and of course, it's a recurring theme in a number of your films. "Without Memory" is one of my favorite of your early documentaries. And then of course "After Life". And I'm wondering if you could comment a little bit about the relationship between memory and film, and the function of film as memory, and vice-versa. And how that affects the way you tell stories and how you view things? [Kore-eda, in Japanese] [Interpreter:] That's a pretty broad question. [Kore-eda, in Japanese] [Interpreter:] What about the two things should I...? It's the memory, like memories within films, and then also... [Man #2:] Whether or not film is somehow a physical manifestation of memory? If that's, if that makes more sense. If that's the impression I'm getting. [Kore-eda, in Japanese] [Kore-eda, in Japanese] [Kore-eda, in Japanese] [Interpreter:] I don't think it's only memory. Basically when I approach films I have three, three aspects. And one is memory, one is creativity and one is observation. And so, I think the word maybe "remembering" is a little more appropriate than the word "memory", for instance. But, like "Still Walking" is mainly, I think, focused on memory. And some other films are more focused on observation. So it depends on the film in that way. [Malcolm:] Questions, thanks. Right in the middle, in the back. Right, yeah, right there. Yeah. Hmm. Yeah, you. [Kore-eda, in Japanese] [Malcolm:] No, no, no, wrong one. Right behind her, right behind her. Yeah, sorry about that. Right there with the flower in her hair. Yep, there you go. [Woman #4 in audience:] Thank you for being here and I really - this is one of my favorite films and I have always go to it whenever I miss home and missing my family. My question - I recently read the novel as well. And my question is, in - what is the relationship to you? Not specifically just this movie but the film and the word. And to you, does this story exist fuller in one form than the other? I sort of just really curious. Thank you. [Interpreter:] I'm sorry, can you say that again? [laughs] [Woman #4:] Oh, I was curious about the relationship between the word and the film, like sorry between words and film to Mr. Kore-eda and whether this particular story if he felt like the existed fuller in one form or the other? [Malcolm:] In terms of the film's relationship to say a novel? [Woman #4:] That, yeah, the same novel that was, that was under... yeah. [Malcolm:] But this wasn't an adaptation, right? [Malcolm:] Right, so the film wasn't based on a novel. [Woman #4:] Right, I mean, the same - he, he published the novel version of the film as well. [Malcolm:] Okay, I got it. So there was, there was a novel based on the film script that was published? Which I wasn't aware of. [Kore-eda, in Japanese] [Malcolm:] Okay, [laughs] were you involved? Sorry, sorry for that, for that. Were you involved in the publication of the novel? And is there a relationship between...? Well, does - is the story different in, on film, as in, as in the novel? How is, how was the story inflected between the two mediums? Is there a relationship between the written word and the visual? [Kore-eda, in Japanese] [Kore-eda, in Japanese] [Kore-eda, in Japanese] [Kore-eda, in Japanese] [Interpreter:] So, as you probably know, the novel is very different from the film. In the novel I go way back to my childhood and expand it quite a bit from what the film is. The time frame is much longer. And I actually wanted to be a novelist, originally. And so, I should sometimes say no, but whenever I'm offered that kind of job I tend to take it. And so - but it's hard and it's very time consuming and so for three of my films, "Hana" and "Still Walking" and one other, I, I wrote all of the novels after the films myself, but all the others I co-wrote with other authors. And, personally, I think making a film is a collaboration. And so, it's something that you share with others and that's how it comes to life. But later when the film is done, I feel like sort of taking possession back of the film again, and saying goodbye to the film. That's sort of possible by, by turning the film into a novel. And so, it's kind of like my final goodbye. So in terms of this film specifically, it was kind of like once I wrote the, wrote the novel, it's like my grief work was, was done. [Malcolm:] We have time for a few more questions. Let's go, gentleman right here. Let's hurry the mic up to him. [Man #3 in audience:] Thank you so much for day. May I ask him in Japanese? [Malcolm:] Sure. [Man #3, in Japanese] [Kore-eda, in Japanese] [Man #3, in Japanese] [laughter] [Interpreter:] The question was there's one shot in particular where the night, at night the butterfly comes into the room and the grandmother's chasing it. And there's one shot in particular where she's in the foreground out of focus, and Abe is there in the background in focus for a moment. He goes out of frame and then the towel that the grandfather left is, is sort of just blowing in the wind there in focus. And I'm wondering what the meaning is to that? And his response was, "Are you a, are you a co-worker of mine? Are you in my business? [Kore-eda, in Japanese] [Interpreter:] That was great, right? [audience laughter and light applause] [Man #3, in Japanese] [Interpreter:] I'm curious of the intention. [Kore-eda, in Japanese] [Kore-eda, in Japanese] [Kore-eda, in Japanese] [Kore-eda, in Japanese] [Interpreter:] The, the... I'm really happy that that's the shot that you're mentioning because it's pretty much one of my, if not the favorite shot of mine in the film, one of my favorites and it wasn't intended at first. I mean, I didn't have that planned. It was something that we discovered on, on set that when he went out of frame, it was sort of left there blowing in the wind and it just felt kind of eerie. And I decided to keep that shot going. And so I'm really happy that we discovered that on set. [Man #3, in Japanese] [Interpreter:] My interpretation was that it was the son's spirit sort of blowing in the wind. Was that any thought of yours? [light audience laughter] [Kore-eda, in Japanese] [Interpreter:] [laughs] That sounds like a good idea. [Malcolm:] Time for a few more questions. Let's go over here. [Man #4 in audience:] I really appreciate the, the camerawork in your film. Like, I really appreciate the stillness. And you, you ra-, we know you rarely move the camera, but when you do the camera movement rarely goes like in and out pushing in and out. You either booming up and down, track left and right. It's like, well, I might - I guess my question is why you keep the camera movement in two di-, two-dimensional instead of like three-dimensional? And the other question, following up with that, is like what's your thought process of where you're gonna put the camera, and when you decide how to move the camera? [Kore-eda, in Japanese] [Kore-eda laughs] [Interpreter:] So I decided for this film that I mostly just wanted to use a fixed camera position. And that was sort of my intention from the beginning. One of the rare moments where there's some handheld is when the butterfly's in the house and she's sort of wobbling around. And there's some shots on her feet and sort of thing. But there was also the crane shot at the end where we go up, and then there's the dolly at the grave. But I decided most of the camera movement in this film. And I did a lot of storyboards so, so that was part of the - a lot of it was in the planning. So yeah, it might not be a very interesting answer, but... [Malcolm:] Alright, last question. Let's go right in the middle here. Wait'll the mic to come. [Kore-eda, in Japanese] [Interpreter:] You've had your hand up since the very beginning. [laughter] [Kore-eda, in Japanese] [Woman #5 in audience:] The dynamic and a chemistry among all the actors, was just so beautiful and wonderful that makes me truly believe that they were actually a family on screen. So my question would be how did you find the chemistry among all of them? Because sometimes when you found two great actors, it doesn't necessarily means they're going to have great chemistry that make their relationship very believable to the audience. So, did you find it - did you look for and find the chemistry among them during the audition? Or it's afterwards you help them to build up their chemistry during rehearsals? Thank you. [Kore-eda sighs] [light audience laughter] [Kore-eda, in Japanese] [Kore-eda, in Japanese] [Interpreter:] I think what's possible in - I think what's, what's... 80% of chemistry I think is determined in, in the auditions and then what's possible with directing is only about 20% of that. [audience laughter] [Kore-eda, in Japanese] [Interpreter:] We spent quite a bit of time. Of course, there was a, there was a table read and then there was a rewrite and then the actual shooting was done on a combination of practical sets and also, I mean practical locations and also actual, actual sets, but the, the sort of cooking while, while talking and that sort of thing was, was practiced pretty extensively. And then we adjusted a lot of the lines or took out a lot of the lines to sort of match some of the actions that were happening. [Kore-eda, in Japanese] [Interpreter:] So there's one thing that I forgot to mention which is that You, who plays the sister of the main character in the film, and in the beginning, you know, scraping the, the daikon and the radish and that kind of thing. On - for "Nobody Knows" she plays the mother on that film. On that set, all the children didn't have the script. And so it was a conscious decision that she wasn't gonna have the script either. So we would just talk about what we were gonna shoot when we're shooting it. And, however, in this film, I knew that we had actors, like experienced actors like Kiki -san and, and others. And so I wanted her to have the lines memorized. However, she showed up the first day of the shoot having not ever opened the script, it seemed, at least from what I could see. So she didn't memorize any of the lines. So we created all of that starting with the rehearsals. And so the great thing that that allowed was for her to sort of become the glue or the oil maybe in, in that sort of family dynamic, meaning she actually saved a lot of moments because she - when things were just sort of starting to pick up in a certain scene, she would just find these tiny little moments to just blurt something out. And those little lines that she would pop in would really bring a lot of life to the scenes, so that was great. Although it made for myself being very nervous all the time on set, wondering if it was gonna go well. [Malcolm:] Director Kore-eda will be back with us tomorrow night for a Q&A following "Maborosi". So please come back for that. But for now, let me just say what a pleasure and honor it is to have you here on stage. Thank you so much for being here with us. [audience applause]