As the 13-year old-students of an unnamed Japanese junior-high school get ready for the bell to ring and announce the end of term, storm clouds are gathering outside, foretelling an impending doom. When their teacher Yuko Moriguchi (Takako Matsu) starts addressing them, the boisterous, rowdy, and unruly bunch is seen hardly paying any attention to her words—some of them are sleepy, some are busy texting on ubiquitous cell phones, some generally spaced out, while others are obviously bored and disinterested in what their teacher has to say.
As oblivious they are to the monotonous monologue of their teacher, it seems Moriguchi is equally unmindful of the cacophony around her, as she starts her address that begins innocuously enough, but gradually builds up to a terrifying conclusion.
Like the students, we, the viewer, too, are initially unaware of exactly where she is going with her monologue as it sifts through apparently unrelated topics, while the camera snakes through students, benches, and the nooks and crannies of the classroom. But like the thunderheads gathering outside, as time passes by, her words take on a more and more ominous shade; and similar to the students in the class, we, too, find our curiosity piqued and attention captured. After all, it is unlike any farewell speech ever delivered by a teacher, who has just resigned from her post and addressing her class the last time.
By the time Moriguchi’s half-hour-long monologue ends, the seemingly disparate aspects of her speech fall in place like an elaborately crafted jigsaw, threading together the answers to the following questions: Why was she referring to Masayoshi Sakuramiya, well-known for his brilliant book, who had travelled the world before becoming a passionate teacher, and was diagnosed with a terminal illness just a month ago? What was the significance of Moriguchi insisting that anytime one of her students asks for her after school hours, she would invariably send a male teacher, instead? Why was she speaking about the health checkups once the next term begins, while handing out cartons of milk to the entire class, if she would be gone by that time, anyway? What did she mean by saying that the death of her four-year-old daughter Manami was not an accident, as the ensuing police investigation had revealed, when she was found floating on the swimming pool inside the school? And who are the two boys of the very class she was addressing, who, she says, had in fact murdered Manami in cold blood? Most importantly, what is it exactly she wants with those two boys?
The first half-an-hour of Tetsuya Nakashima’s Kokuhaku aka Confessions (2010) has more twists, turns, and surprises than most films manage to fit in into their entire runtime. And after such a breathless start, one would expect the film to lose its momentum thereon. But here, too, Nakashima’s film, based on a bestselling novel by Kanae Minato, proves us wrong. Like a clock that we see on screen a number of times, the film meticulously surges ahead, keeping us wondering with every ticking moment what Moriguchi’s painstakingly crafted plan for revenge has in store for the two implicated individuals—the athletics aficionado Naoki Shimamura (Kaoru Fujiwara) and the electronics prodigy Shuuya Watanabe (Yukito Nishii).
Moriguchi, as we come to learn, is more than just an avenging angel. Her intention is to make the two perpetrators realise the severity of the crime she believes they have committed, and make them come to terms with the importance of life itself.
Similarly, the film is not merely a revenge drama. It is a critique of the Japanese legal system, specifically, Article 41 of the Penal Code, which stipulates that those under 14 years of age are not liable for the crimes they commit, and hence, cannot be punished as a result; a treatise on the desire youngsters have to be recognised; a commentary on how most parents are completely ignorant of how to reach out to their kids; a condemnation of how majority of parents impose their own dreams on their children, unaware of the detrimental effect it can have on those young minds; a denunciation of how gadgets, while being designed to keep them connected have actually succeeded in alienating the young generation from their peers; and an impeachment of how impressionable young minds are always in the quest for an idol to emulate, and the extent to which that blind faith can be exploited.
Intricately structured akin to the novel it is based on—divided into five confessions—Kokuhaku is a frightening depiction of teenage group dynamics, peer pressure, and the angst of adolescence. It is, indeed rare to come across a film where the audience finds it difficult to take sides with any of the characters on screen, simply because each one of them is irredeemable. It is with immense gusto that Nakashima has pulled this one off. His mastery of the craft is evident in the way he has used the red-and-white milk cartons as harbingers of a horrific plot point; the introduction of fish-eye lenses to invoke the idea that there is more to what is being viewed than what the normal eye can see; a cleaver chopping off an electronic toy resulting in a splatter of its mechanical body parts like blood spurting out of a human body being butchered; the uneasy screech of the chalk on the board as Moriguchi writes ‘life’ on it; Moriguchi opening a window, while allowing her class to know a particular secret in her life and then shutting it as soon as she has finished relating it, as well as Nakashima’s poignant portrayal of the attention-craving, loneliness, and rejection that adolescents find so difficult to cope with.
During her address, Moriguchi had revealed that as a teacher, she chose to ‘do my best to place myself on the same level as the students’. In her quest to avenge her daughter’s death, not only did she stay true to her word, but also meted out a lesson that would last a lifetime and scar the two perpetrators forever.
Japan’s official selection in the Best Foreign Film category at the 83rd Annual Academy Awards, it is quite apparent why this searing tale of adolescent anomie did not make it to the top five. The ease with which Japan tackles the harsh reality of life, be it on screen or off it, is conspicuous by its absence in mainstream Hollywood. And having an ambiguous conclusion to a situation that Hollywood chooses to forsake rather than face did not help the film’s cause, either.
This is one of the many life’s lessons that the American film industry, which is still in its puberty when it comes to confronting the cruel side of growing up is concerned, needs to learn, fast.
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