Like Father, Like Son (2013)
そして父になる
Film details
Drama · Hirokazu Koreeda · 2h 0min
Synopsis
Ryota Nonomiya is a successful businessman driven by money. He learns that his biological son was switched with another child after birth. He must make a life-changing decision and choose his true son or the boy he raised as his own.
Verdict
Contemplative drama about parenthood that affirms the value of constructed bonds.
In-depth analysis
Japanese filmmaker Hirokazu Kore-eda crafts a moral drama of surgical precision. The dilemma is extreme yet real: two families discover that their six-year-old sons were swapped at birth. The film does not offer easy answers, but neither does it succumb to relativism. Ryoata, the protagonist father, embodies the modern temptation to reduce fatherhood to a project of genetic and social engineering. His arc is clear: he learns that being a father is not about possessing a child, but about giving oneself to him in the everyday. The direction is contemplative, trusting that the viewer can think without the need for emphasis. The screenplay respects the complexity of the dilemma without deconstructing the family: the two families are father-mother-child units; the conflict is what to do in the face of a medical error that no one sought. The film delicately affirms that fatherhood is woven in small gestures, in daily presence, in quiet sacrifice. It is a testament to true filiation, not against it. For parents, a work that prompts reflection on what it truly means to raise a child. Sound judgment and guaranteed depth.