Sheep in the Box / 箱の中の羊 - Movie Review

The Movie: Sheep in the Box / 箱の中の羊

The Director: Hirokazu Kore-eda

The Cast: Haruka Ayase, Daigo Yamamoto, Rimu Kuwaki

The Story: Set in the near future, Otone Komoto works as an architect. She is married to Kensuke Komoto, who runs a construction company. The married couple decide to welcome a humanoid robot into their home as their son.

The Rating: 6 / 10

The Review:

Hirokazu Kore-eda directed Shoplifters which is one of my all time favorite Japanese films and, for me, it cemented his filmmaking style of creating very thoughtful, patient, and almost dreamlike cinematic experiences. The attention he pays to every detail within every scene has to be a painstakingly meticulous process but the results often elevate the material as he transfers it from the page to the screen. With Sheep in the Box, he takes on a science fiction story in a way that humanizes robotics and artificial intelligence in ways that only he could ever accomplish.

The story is mostly about grief and loss and trying to hold onto the things we care most about, in this case being a child lost to a tragic event. Watching the movie, I was reminded of Vision's line n Wandavision when he says "What is grief, if no love persevering" which is probably one of the most meaningful and impactful sentences ever uttered within the entirety of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It carries so much weight and, while I'm sure the director had no connection to it within his story, it is very relevant to the mental and emotional struggles that the couple, played by Haruka Ayase and Daigo Yamamoto, are working through.

While the topic felt very right and very relevant for this day and age, the execution left a lot to be desired as the movie had a lot of difficulty in holding my attention. The pacing is intentionally slow but there wasn't nearly enough emotional impact for me to easily stay fully engaged. Everything about the movie should and could have been something really special, it just felt really flat and I'm not sure of a way that could have been avoided without making wholesale changes or having another director take on the material.

There are some very interesting points being made about artificial intelligence and robotics and I wish the science fiction elements of that context could have been explored further. As ir is, the movie is more about the emotional impacts than anything else but I feel like a deeper dive into the technology would have actualy helped to draw that out more than it was. I will say that the performances from Ayase and Yamamoto are really nice and well woeth the effort of watching the movie, I just wish everything else had been just as interesting as they were.

Thank you as always for reading my reviews.