The Third Murder

With his film of the year, The Third Murder, master director and Films from the South veteran Hirokazu Koreeda has changed gears from his regular family drama mode to a philosophical murder mystery. Misumi, who is just out of prison after doing time for murder, finds himself accused again, for robbery and murder. He clearly has a motive, and has even pleaded guilty. And so the main objective for Shigemori, who has been appointed his defence attorney, is to save Misumi from the death penalty.

But as the date for the trial moves closer, Shigemore becomes more and more uncertain about the very facts of the case. Could the victim's wife actually be involved? Or is the murder an act of revenge for an even more wicked crime? To add to the confusion, Misumi keeps changing his testimony, and it doesn't make it easier that when Misumi was convicted for the first murder many years ago, Shigemori's own father was the judge who oversaw the case. Perhaps if his father has used the death penalty way back then, lives could have been saved, and Shigemori would have been saved all the trouble?

The philosophical inquiries into questions of crime, punishment, doubt, truth and identity are an important part of The Third Murder. They particularly come to the fore in the many scenes where Shigemori questions Misumi, and where the two of them are separated by a glass wall that mirrors their faces and super-imposes them onto each other. Like all of Koreeda's previous films, The Third Murder is well-acted and well-crafted, and never fails to portray its characters with humanism. Cato Fossum

Hirokazu Koreeda (b. 1962) is one of Japan's foremost filmmakers. He started out studying literature, but changed his mind and started making documentary films instead. Koreeda has directed award-winning feature films such as After Life (1998), Still Walking (2008) and Like Father, Like Son (2013), and was one of the main guests at last year's festival.