3 Reasons Why You Need to Watch Shoplifters

Shoplifters is a Japanese movie from 2018 by the director Hirokazu Koreeda. Taking place in the margins of Tokyo, the movie tells the compelling story about the poor non-biological family that functions on loyalty and shoplifting. This article gives you three reasons why Shoplifters should be next on your ‘To Watch List’.

1. Close to reality

The story is about the conventional Shibata family who goes the opposite way of tradition to survive during hard financial times. The family is taught the art of shoplifting by their father Osamu (Lily Frank). His wife Nobuyo (Sakura Ando) works at a job, but due to the slowing economy, she gets fewer and fewer working hours. Their daughter Aki (Mayu Matsuoka) gives her gain for providing the family through her work in the soft-porn industry. While brother Shoto (Jyo Kairi) takes the road of theft. One winter night, the father and son encounter a girl named Juri, who was seemingly abandoned. The family decides to take her home, and after realizing that she was physically abused, they decide to adopt her. The girl herself insists and gets accepted into a family where she is showered with love and affection, which she had never experienced before. However, things get complicated when the authority gets involved. Later on in the story, the viewers will get revealed the true secrets of the family members, and their lives go through a drastic metamorphosis.

You will relate to the story by closely following the family and the situation they reside in. During the movie, you will be exploring the meaning of how it is to grow up under poor circumstances, as well as the bittersweet binding power of crime and love. The movie looks at crime from a different perspective and makes the viewers come to sympathize with people committing a crime.

2. The message of the movie

Koreeda was working on this movie while working on his other film Like Father, Like Son. Events based on real-life, like the Japanese recession, were some of the factors that influenced him to create this story, alongside the increasing media coverage of theft and poverty. However, the story’s focus isn’t on the societal problems, rather around the theme family. The surrounding idea behind most of Koreeda’s movie is the question “What exactly defines a family? Is the family we choose more important than the one we are born in?”

In an interview when The Daily Beast asked the question about the research for the screenplay and the people met during the process, Koreeda answered:

“The story is not based on one particular actual event but I did refer to real-life incidents revolving around families in the past few years. I wanted to depict a family that was bound by something other than blood ties, and the idea of a family bound by crime was the first thing that came to mind.”

He continued about his visit to an orphanage: “While we were there, kids started to come back from school and I asked one little girl what she was studying at school. She pulled out her Japanese class textbook from her backpack and suddenly started reading Leo Lionni’s Swimmy out loud to us. When she finished, everyone clapped for her, she was beamed at us with such joy. At that moment I thought, maybe she wanted to read that out loud to her parents whom she doesn’t get to live with. I couldn’t get the girl out of my head, and I wrote the scene in which the boy read his textbook out loud right away.

When I was working on TV, a senior told me that I should make a program for one person. I made this film for the little girl reading Swimmy.”

– Hirokazu Koreeda

3. The cinematography

Next to the portrayal of realness and the deep meaning behind the themes, you will fall in love with the cinematography used in the movie. The film is like a moving art piece portraying the Shibata’s as a real family. The cinematographer of the movie is Ryuto Kondo. He does a great job at capturing the subtle movements of the objects suiting the architecture and the messy surroundings The subtle way of working with the camera control the movement of the narrative emphasizing the natural acting performances of the actors, truly doing justice to the characters.  

For more stories based on real events, read this article.

Are you planning to watch Shoplifters? Or have you watched the movie? Let us know and share your thoughts in the comment section below!

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