I personally describe Innocence as the movie that has it all. It has joyfulness, sadness, drama, thriller, anger, beauty, peacefulness, and mystery. You can feel the joyfulness by the way the children plays around. There is definitely sadness and anger when the children were trying to figure out what is outside and how to get there. Then the thrilling part is when Iris started to get curious about where Bianca is heading every night. The drama is clearly visible in the way the two teacher reacts to each other, you can feel that there is some sort of special relationship/feeling between them. However, you clearly see the beauty of nature being shown in such a nice greenish ambiance and the peacefulness in the form of very minimal use of music.
As far as I know, there have been no other movie that has it all like this. I know that The Fine Art of Love did not by any mean try to go this way. I believe that they were going more into the darker side of the story, and by going that way it means that it does not have the same excitement as Innocence.
Also I happen to have seen a couple of Japanese movies (not a lot) which somehow I personally believe were very unusual in terms of the story and visualization. Yet unfortunately none of them were in any way as interesting as Innocence. Thus I can confidently say that at least for myself I have never seen any movie as complete as Innocence.
In addition to all that, I also like the fact that they do not use professional child actresses. To me it really brings out the innocent feeling. Every move and dialogues they make just seems so natural.
This movie is definitely something I would recommend anyone to see it at least once in their lifetime. I really mean anyone from any religious belief, nationality, race, and gender. It is good for broadening our mind on how a good movie can be made.
Definitely a 10 out of 10 score.
