SHEEP IN THE BOX Review: Tale of Not So Artificial Intelligence
It is indeed a perilous fate to be a film festival darling.
On the one hand, sure, you might have a standing invitation for your next work in one of the “Big Five”. The downside is that, after a while, everyone starts believing they know what this new work should and shouldn’t be, as they’ve come to expect certain things.
It would seem that Hirokazu Koreeda, the author of Shoplifters and Monster, has become the latest victim of this phenomenon.
His latest film, Sheep in the Box, which premiered in competition at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year, has been met with mostly reserved or outright negative reviews, most of which cite the lack of originality and the absence of true emotion in the story. The film’s premise might indeed evoke some cinematic memories of Steven Spielberg’s A.I. or of Kogonada’s After Yang, which also had its premiere in Cannes in 2021.
In an unspecified but slightly more technologically advanced future, humanoids are a routine (yet still expensive) part of everyday life. The Komoto family, Otone (Haruka Ayase) and Kensuke (Daigo Yamamoto), get a promotional offer from a company specializing in providing people with android copies of the loved ones they’re not ready to say goodbye to yet. Two years ago, the couple lost their young son, Kakeru (Rimu Kuwaki), and Otone believes that having a humanoid version of Kakeru will help them fully heal, while Kensuke doesn’t agree with the idea, but doesn’t protest too much either.
While Sheep in the Box teases several possible genre developments along the way – such as going full-on melodrama or taking a turn into futuristic thriller territory – it is, in fact, an emotional journey, first and foremost, even if the emotions here are intentionally stilted. There are no unexpected revelations in the story, since neither Kekeru nor Koreeda is confused. The former is fully aware that he is a robot and of his role in this make-believe family, while the director (and the author of the screenplay) never really questions whether androids dream of electric sheep, as it has been answered many times over before.
While the film does offer some acute observations about the nature of artificial intelligence (such as the humans’ need to believe that whatever AI they’re using is genuinely enthralled by communicating with them), Koreeda remains faithful to himself, being more interested in human behavior at the worst of times. Placing the story in an aesthetically pleasing, numbingly sterile reality, among flawed but inherently nice people, all captured with the trademark reservedness, Koreeda digs into the process of grief from a slightly different angle than we are commonly shown nowadays.
Grief is a lonely affair that can also be inevitably selfish – a journey during which things and, more importantly, people can and will become tools in the painful process. While Koreeda reserves the acts of physical violence for off-screen characters we never see, it’s still noticeable that Otone’s and Kensuke’s dealings with their loss are all about themselves (up until a certain point, even apart from each other's struggles), and none of them are about a sentient being living in their home, who has his own path.
For all of the too-on-the-nose nods to Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince (also referenced in the film’s title) that provide multiple quip opportunities based on its most famous quote (we are responsible for the Roomba we have tamed!), Sheep in the Box is less a futuristic warning and more of a realistic observation. In the end, Koreeda’s film explores the necessity but also ugliness of grief as the process that can not only cause self-harm, but also damage those we surround ourselves with in the wake of loss.
It might be easier to pretend that this is a familiar sci-fi cerfuffle than to admit that the parable isn’t even all that figurative here: for all the advancement of technology and our unhealthy situationships with ChatGPT, the ones we inflict most pain and dickishness on are our fellow humans.
The film opens Friday, July 24, only in movie theaters, via Neon Releasing. Visit their official site for locations and showtimes.
