Il bambino

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.

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.

The premise of Boy is quite simple: a middle aged couple travels around Japan and fakes accidents because they know hapless automobile drivers would rather pay a little bit of money to make their troubles go away then confront them. Most of the time they get the oldest child, who is never given a name beyond Boy, to quickly jump into a car from the side. The drivers must be very guilty people because they all assume they have in fact hit the Boy in spite of the impossible logistics they are presented with.

The Boy is the main character of the film and he's as disturbed as you would expect a ten year old boy who works dangerous con jobs to be. Since his family moves around all the time he doesn't have any sort of perspective of place, he hears the names of cities they are in and ones they are going to but they are never more than names to him. The Boy also lacks the usual naivety and faith in others that are usually found in children that age; he sees the worst side of the strange adults he deals with and his parents are trashy criminals: in addition to being the mastermind of their scam, the Father is also abusive and manipulative. The Mother is actually not the Boy's real mother but he still prefers her to his father; she may treat him poorly and give in all too easily to his father but she at least occasionally feels bad and tries to make him feel better. The Boy is in the unusual position of being the most intelligent and mature person in most of the encounters he has with others.

Although the Boy is disenchanted with humanity he is not disenchanted with all lifeforms: he repeatedly tells his baby brother and the Mother about the aliens from outer space. These aliens actually care about one another and help each other out instead of greedily deceiving each other. Basically, the aliens represent to him what family represents to most children his age. Unsurprisingly, he sees himself as a part of this mysterious but ubiquitous race, presumably one that has been placed in Japan by mistake.

In addition to the fascinating characterization of the protagonist Boy is also interesting for its experimental style. Oshima experiments with still images and distortions (as in the scene in which the Boy wears someone else's glasses and everything is slanted) and especially with color: filters give scenes tone they wouldn't have otherwise, often suggesting the emotions of the Boy quite effectively.

Oshima shows Japan as a country striving to find a sense of itself much as the boy does, particularly in the scene where Japan's traditional colors of red and white are displayed prominently in the background: not on the familiar flag but on a giant Coca Cola billboard. It's also no coincidence that the family exploits automobile traffic and not something more traditionally Japanese.

With Boy Oshima managed to make a film that was simultaneously universal in its treatment of human nature, culturally relevant in its treatment of postwar Japan's national identity, and modernistically rich in its treatment of cinematic techniques.

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.

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.