Boy

Can I call this film dreamy? I don't know if it's wrong to call this film dreamy. Maybe I watched it late at night, at a time when I should've been dreaming. But I don't know... the atmosphere struck me as strange, the use of colour was unpredictable, the whole movie seemed to glide right past me, and there was something unsettling about how it felt.

The story is also a little intense. Maybe more so nightmarish or fever dreamish than normal dreamy. It's about a family who fake motor accidents - as pedestrians - to extort money from drivers. They have their kids involved, and then that leads to extra drama. Things don't play out as expected. Some things never happen, and some happen very quickly. Its arthouse in the "unpredictable structure" sense, but not in the "we're going to be boring and/or pretentious sense," because this film moved well overall.

Nagisa Oshima was a strange but always interesting director. I don't know if I've disliked anything he's done, and films like Death by Hanging and Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence both his me pretty hard. Boy's another solid entry into his filmography, so it seems.

Have you ever seen a film you know is well made but also is painful and unpleasant to watch? Well, if you, try watching "Boy" ("Shônen") from director Nagisa Ôshima. It's not the least bit enjoyable to watch, though I admire the quality of the production.

While I didn't know it when I watched the film, "Boy" is apparently based on a true story about some horrible people. It focuses on a young boy (about age 10) and his pathetic life. His father is a lazy, violent jerk. His step-mother is very, very dependent and puts up with the violence. But worse, she 'works' to earn money for the family--money earned by faking accidents by walking in front of cars and then shaking down the drivers for quick settlements. Eventually, these lovely parents get the boy into the act--and he soon becomes bumped and bruised all over because of these falls. To avoid detection, they move about Japan like nomads. To cope with all this, the boy has an active fantasy life but he also seems very depressed and lost.

As you noticed above, the plot is pretty awful. But, the film is made in a manner that seems quite real and pulls the viewer in to the sad tale. However, you really DON'T connect with the people in the film--perhaps a weakness of the movie. Well made but awful.

Tetsuo Abe travels Japan with his mother and father and little brother. They're con artists, pretending to be hit by cars and then mulcting the drivers for cash. The youngster makes up his own reality in which an alien comes from the stars to bring righteousness to the world. But sometimes it seems he believes it, sometimes he he tells this fiction to amuse his younger brother, and sometimes he seems to use it to comfort it somehow. He loves his mother and fears his father.

I have concluded that, brilliant film maker that he is, director Nagisa Oshima rarely makes movies that I find particularly telling. He seems to hate all his characters, and blames them for the ills of Japan. He doesn't have any solutions; like many of the Japanese New Wave, he seems more intent on apportioning blame than is solving any problems. Sometimes that is an appropriate thing to do, but in this slow-moving movie of misery, falsehoods, and insanity, there seems nothing to do but throw up my hands at the rampant nihilism.

This movie dramatizes the real-life adventures of a roving family of con artists who faked traffic accidents to extort money from unwitting victims all over Japan. It offers a tension-filled psychological study of depraved, sociopathic parents exploiting each other and their 10-year-old son for easy money. The acting is remarkably good, particularly on the part of the boy who takes up the family trade with a mixture of gusto and reluctance.

The cinematography is wonderful -- many shots are taken at a distance from the subjects, often through half-open doors, semi-closed blinds and other obstructions. The camera work reinforces the message, subliminally, that these are dangerous people living on the margins of society, and it is best to watch their antics at a safe distance. The film editing is excellent, particularly in the scenes where traffic mishaps are being plotted and executed by the family.

My only quibble is that the film does at times have a mannered, contrived quality. For example, it abruptly switches from color to black and white and back again to color. At times, as when the black and white footage is quite overexposed, the effect is constructive and adds to the strained atmosphere; at other times, though, you feel a little whipsawed to little purpose.

This film is as worthwhile as it is off the beaten track. Anyone with an interest in Japanese cinema or aberrant families would do well to see it.

although not a terrible film, there's really nothing out of the ordinary to see in this. You feel no emotion for any of the characters, which is unfortunate because you want to like at least one of them. The fact that the subtitles were white really hurt the film. On the plus side, the soundtrack, while very scarce, fit the film quite well.