Producers: Kaoru Matsuzaki and Megumi Banse   Director: Hirokazu Kore-eda    Screenplay: Hirokazu Kore-eda   Cast: Haruka Ayase, Daigo Yamamoto, Rimu Kuwaki, Kimiko Yo, Nana Seino, Kan’ichirô Satô, Akhiro Kakuta, Kayu Noro, Hinata Hiiragi, Min Tanaka, Mari Hoshino and Ayumu Nakajira    Distributor: Neon

Grade: C

The best of Hirokazu Kore-eda’s previous films have been so uncommonly moving that “Sheep in the Box” proves an especial disappointment.  At a time when stories about artificial intelligence mostly emphasize its menacing potential, however, this more benign take on the possibilities it offers for AI-based robotics is at least different—although, if you speculate beyond its apparently comforting conclusion, you might feel a gnawing sense of danger lurking down the line.

Kore-eda’s script revolves, as the title derived from an episode in Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s “The Little Prince” indicates, around the power of imagination; the sequence is about envisioning a sheep hidden in a box rather than viewing one explicitly illustrated for you.  In this case the individual imagining something—seeing what is invisible to the eye—might be human, but could conceivably instead be a robotic humanoid.

Set in what’s referred to as the near future, the film is initially a tale of grief—that of architect Otone Komoto (Haruka Ayase) and her husband Kensuke (Daigo Yamamoto), a master carpenter, whose young son Kakeru was killed in a hit-and-run two years previously.  Otone is home alone, working on an assignment to design a large, modern house for the Hanos, Junichi (Akihiro Kakuta) and Kasumi (Kayo Noro), when a drone delivery box arrives, containing a holographic invitation to visit the office of REbirth, a company that provides humanoid replicas of departed loved ones.  Kensuke is reluctant to go, but Otone insists, and they agree to accept a humanoid Kakeru (Rimu Kuwaki), at least on a trial basis.

Their new quasi-son is at first a blank slate able only to say “I’m home, Mama.”  He’s also unlike a human boy.  He doesn’t sleep, recharging at night while sitting in a chair.  He must be kept from getting wet.  He’s equipped with a switch that prevents his wandering from proximity with the Komotos.  And, of course, he won’t age.

Otone is more accepting of the replacement than Kensuke, who dismisses it as just a machine that he refuses to allow calling him Daddy and, at first, chooses not to have much contact with, though he gradually relents.  It’s eventually revealed that both are suffering from guilt as well as grief, since each blames himself for failing to pick up the boy from school on the day he was killed walking home.  

Meanwhile Kakeru, in his quiet, methodical way, is trying to learn to be not just a boy but this particular boy.  In the process, however, he grows aware of what makes him different from human children.  He develops a connection with trees, which some believe to have souls, though the engineers at REbirth reject the notion that their humanoids have one.  And he joins with an older humanoid, Gen Hidaka (Kan’ichirô Satô), who is assembling a cohort of the robots, many of them abused by their owners, in a project to create a community of their own.  Hidaka removes the switches preventing their venturing away from their “parents” and has them working in secret to achieve their goal.  (This plot thread is connected with another involving reports of missing children and suspicions about a serial kidnapper.)

Despite the secrecy of this humanoid group, however, the tone of “Sheep in the Box” remains gentle, unhurried and ruminative—so much so, in fact, that it grows tedious despite its vaguely futuristic atmosphere (the production design is by Tayuka Okada, and there are some modest effects supervised by Soichi Umezawa and Tetsuya Shiraisi, as well as a rather rudimentary design for the inner workings of the robot by Kouji Tajima). Kore-eda accentuates the lapidary mood not only through his deliberate pacing but his solemn editing, and Ryuto Kondo’s stately cinematography and Yuta Bandoh’s muted score add to it.     

There are, however, a few points where things perk up slightly.  In one sequence, Kensuke uses Kakeru in an attempt to jump-start the investigation into his son’s accident, with unfortunate results involving the police (based in large measure on his refusal to let the humanoid call him Papa).  And when Otone’s sharp-tongued mother Nobuyo (Kimiko Yo) shows up unexpectedly and berates her daughter for adopting a humanoid replacement for her dead son rather than having another child, the dramatic pulse quickens.

But even Nobuyo is swept up in the film’s final act, in which the Komotos join in Hidaka’s plan and help his group, including Kakeru, move to an isolated forest locale.  There Kakeru immediately embraces a huge tree, communing with its soul—just as he had embraced a tree in Otone’s patio which had been planted in her dead son’s memory.  The inference that Kakeru, and the other humanoids, have souls despite their makers’ denials, is inescapable.  And it’s hardly meaningless that the house Otone is designing for the Hanos gets the approval of all after much haggling only when she installs a tree in the middle of her elaborate model. 

Thus the soul is, like the sheep of the fable, an unseen entity that can be imagined—and the humanoid Kakeru is doing so by communing with those of trees, including the one in the Komodo home.  The implication that humanoids possess souls as well seems clear.

Of course, that can be read as either comforting or, if one sees it as an indication that AI robots might develop as rivals to humans, threatening.  “Sheep in the Box” raises provocative questions about the future, but its almost deadeningly placid surface and soft characterizations make it an imperfect vehicle for them, though the cast and crew clearly give their all in support of Kore-eda’s vision, with Kuwaki particularly impressive as the humanoid at the center of things.