My Cultural Highlights: SHOPLIFTERS

In a recent conversation with Sam Harris, psychologist-cum-economist Daniel Kahneman spoke about memories that have the annoying tendency of getting in the way of our experiences. As an example, he talked about this guy listening to a beautiful classical record and then becoming frustrated by the screeching noise of the vinyl. Which, this guy believes, ruins the whole thing - the noise being the sole memory left of the experience. Naturally, Professor Kahneman mentions how absurd this notion really is - after all, there was one full hour of great music before that noise, and no one can take that away from the listener. No matter how exasperated the listener may appear to be.

My relationship with Shoplifters, the winner of last year's Cannes festival, has a lot to do with what I have just described. The film, which is set in modern-day Tokyo and tells of a dysfunctional family involved in shoplifting and various other dubious activities, provoked in me various shades of confusion, anger, irritation. The constant slurping of noodles. The unlikable characters. The perverted nature of the relationships, both sexual and non-sexual. Most of the time, I kept being reminded why it is that, Kurosawa and Miyazaki aside, I never cared for Japanese culture whose otherness has always seemed as off-putting as the taste of sushi.

Then, however, I fell in love with Shoplifters, and it took the final scene to do that. Just a couple of minutes of a little girl on the balcony, with no words spoken except for a famous English counting rhyme that she keeps repeating again and again. "One, two, buckle my shoe...". And then there is something else she does - something that stays with you long after you have stopped watching the film. Something that made the whole experience so valuable as to seem priceless. Suddenly, there was no slurping and there was no vulnerable Japanese guy lying in the lap of a girl who undresses for money. Or, rather, it all did happen, but it was all part of a raw, bruising and still very humane story which is as much about memory as it is about experience.