Kore-eda listens to his characters' inner thoughts with the attentiveness of a piano tuner, and reveals them with the lightest inferences.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
Its modest surface belies the depths of a lovely seriocomedy that concisely lays bare all kinds of uncomfortable dynamics in seemingly casual, low-key fashion.
New York Daily News by Elizabeth Weitzman
An usually insightful rendering of an ordinary family, Hirokazu Kore-eda's contemplative Japanese drama is the sort of movie that makes its greatest impact long after you've seen it.
We are in the presence of a new classic.
The New York Times by Manohla Dargis
This is life as it’s lived, not dreamed. And this is a family bound not only by sorrow, but also by a shared history that emerges in 114 calibrated minutes and ends with a wallop.
Quite aside from Shinto transformation parables or Buddhist reincarnation teachings, the final scene shows how family wisdom is conserved and recycled. It's a moment that might elicit a smile or a tear, or perhaps both.
Chicago Sun-Times by Roger Ebert
Painful family issues are more likely to stay beneath the surface, known to everyone but not spoken of. Still Walking, a magnificent new film from Japan, is very wise about that, and very true.
Koreeda, talented director that he is, never allows the story to sink into soap-opera melodrama, and he refrains from pointing fingers.
Kore-eda stated in an interview about Shoplifters that he wanted to further explore the question that prompted his previous film Like Father, Like Son. That question was: What makes a family? It seems that that question permeates all of Kore-eda's films, even this one, which precedes both aforementioned works. This film is delicate and masterfully acted. It is incredibly compelling without venturing into melodrama.