Mikuma confesses that he killed his boss and burned him because he was fired and because he needed the money.

The famous lawyer Shigemori must defend him, knowing that the man will face the death penalty, despite not believing his guilt.

Mikuma had already been convicted 30 years earlier for the same crime, and this time at each interview with the lawyers he changes his version, every detail different until he confesses that he was induced to murder by the boss's wife who was interested in collecting insurance.

The constant shifting of the alleged perpetrator's cards has an obvious purpose.

An intimate thriller where the question becomes repetitive and constant....

Tight dialogues, details scattered, recovered, removed, changed, misrepresented.

Everything seems so confused and obscure except for Kore-eda Hirokazu.

Although for the first thirty minutes the film may appear slow, chaotic, and repetitive, in reality the viewer is subjected to resistance work through dense dialectical exchanges that prelude, with continuous symbolic allusions, condensed implications of meaning that will reveal the true intentions of the narrative.

Is the goal actually to discover the culprit? The truth? The outcome of the story? The death sentence?

What are the rules of the game that the alleged murderer imposes? Why is he constantly changing his version of events and involving the dead man's daughter, skilled at faking tears, and his mother, worthy of the attention of every possible suspect?

A film that, through the suspense of a fake thriller, with the hypothesis of the rape of a daughter, does not forget to highlight the themes so dear to the director: the parent-child relationship and dialogue.

At one point, the lawyer abandons the strict procedural logic of the defense, a logic that almost never matches the truth, and this allows for the turning point of the film's meaning ... whose title is: " the third murder," why?

The first would be the one related to the found body whose real, though supposed perpetrator cannot be identified.

The second murder: Justice. In the courts nowadays it is the lawyers who write the scripts and dialogues of the defendants with their strategies not aimed at confronting the defendant with his responsibilities and awareness.

The third murder is Truth. "Where is the Truth?" the film continually asks.

The answer is that we are trivial containers in which the contents are continuously replaceable, transformable, decantable and misrepresentable.

We see and feel things not as they are but as we want and can; our thoughts are our interpretations which in turn are the result of other representations and narratives.

"Truth is an illusion whose illusory nature has been lost," said Nietzsche, who argued, as the film points out that " there are no facts but only interpretations."

This film is therefore also a sophisticated vessel that mystifies the concept through a story by which it stands for the concept.

Here is the grandiose crime that the great Kore-eda Hirokazu commits.

If there were an exhibition of conceptual cinema with this film it would win the Golden Logos.

Metaphysical!

23-Jun-2023 by Beatrice