Like father like son movie how to#

The saga is inimitably Japanese in another peculiar but magnificent respect: It feels alinear.

Here, when one of the characters conducts him or herself in a way that seems foreign in the West, we understand the origin of the behavior.

Whereas other Asian imports, such as Lee Chang-dong's drama Poetry, risked indecipherability, Like Father never does. Koreeda's most commendable achievement in this picture involves keeping these indigenous distinctions, these intangible limitations that hang loosely in the air, fully visible throughout the drama. To more traditional adults, such as Ryomo, the notion of raising another family's offspring isn't simply inconceivable, but reprehensible, even sacrilegious - making the news that arrives from the hospital not just upsetting, but a grave personal assault. But beneath its veneer of contemporaneity, much of Japanese society still rests on a foundation of ancient, unyielding strictures woven around the concept of blood lineage. To many viewers in North America and Europe, where adoption and surrogate parentage are run-of-the-mill, retaining custody of the children and treating them as one's own would be the obvious, de facto response to such a crisis. This dilemma will likely seem more alien to Western audiences than it will to the average Japanese person. Should the couples go on as before, pretending - for the sake of the sons they have raised - that nothing has shifted? Or should they attempt to swap children and begin again from ground zero? And if they choose the latter option, what psychological and emotional ramifications will accompany that decision for parents and sons?

Like father like son movie how to#

The families meet and consider taking action against the hospital, but such recourse is tangential to the most critical question: how to adjust their interfamilial behavior. DNA tests confirm the parents' gravest fears: The child they've come to know and love isn't their biological offspring, but the son of Yukari and Yudai Saiki ( YГґko Maki and RirГ® FurankГ®, respectively), a working-class couple in a nearby town they gave birth in the same hospital at the same time and have blindly spent years raising the Nonomiyas' little boy, named Ryusei (ShГґgen Hwang), along with their other children. Then shattering news threatens to tear the household to pieces: The country hospital where Midori delivered Keita phones the couple and informs them that its employees may have erred six years prior by accidentally confusing the birth parentage of Keita with that of another infant. They love their little boy, although Ryomo puts undue pressure on Keita to succeed, despite the child's still-tender age. Ryomo is a driven businessman from a conservative Japanese family, Midori a quiet, affectionate, stay-at-home mother. Masaharu Fukuyama and Machiko Ono star, respectively, as Ryomo and Midori Nonomiya, a married couple raising their only child, six-year-old son Keita (Keita Ninomiya), in an upscale apartment. вЂњA tender poem about the ebb and flow of paternal love.Hirokazu Koreeda's Like Father, Like Son observes several months in the lives of two radically different Japanese families, initially unacquainted with one another, but who are mutually thrust into a bizarre, devastating situation that courts only sticky solutions. Ryota is forced to make a life-changing decision, to choose between вЂnatureвЂ™ and вЂnurture.вЂ™ Seeing MidoriвЂ™s devotion to Keita even after learning his origin, and communicating with the rough yet caring family that has raised his natural son for the last six years, Ryota also starts to question himself: has he really been a вЂfatherвЂ™ all these years? This is the moving story of a man who finally faces himself when he encounters an unexpected wall for the first time in his life. Their six-year-old son, Keita, is not вЂtheirвЂ™ son: the hospital gave them the wrong baby. Then one day, he and his wife, Midori, get an unexpected phone call from the hospital. Would you choose your natural son, or the son you believed was yours after spending six years together? Kore-eda Hirokazu, the globally acclaimed director of вЂњNobody Knows,вЂќ вЂњStill Walking,вЂќ and вЂњI WishвЂќ returns to the big screen with another family - a family thrown into torment after a phone call from the hospital where the son was bornвЂ¦ Ryota has earned everything he has by his hard work, and believes nothing can stop him from pursuing his perfect life as a winner.