Boy (film)
Encyclopedia
Boy is a 1969
1969 in film
The year 1969 in film involved some significant events.-Events:* Last year for prize giving at the Venice Film Festival until it is revived in 1980...

 Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

ese film directed by Nagisa Oshima
Nagisa Oshima
is a Japanese film director and screenwriter. After graduating from Kyoto University he was hired by Shochiku Ltd. and quickly progressed to directing his own movies, making his debut feature A Town of Love and Hope in 1959....


Plot

Based on real events reported in Japanese newspapers in 19661, Boy follows the title character across Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

, as he is forced to participate in a dangerous scam to support his dysfunctional family
Dysfunctional family
A dysfunctional family is a family in which conflict, misbehavior, and often abuse on the part of individual members occur continually and regularly, leading other members to accommodate such actions. Children sometimes grow up in such families with the understanding that such an arrangement is...

. The boy Toshio's father is an abusive, lazy veteran, who forces his wife, the boy's stepmother, to feign being hit by cars in order to shake down the guilty motorists. When his wife is unable to perform the scam, Toshio is enlisted. The boy's confused perspective of the scams and his chaotic family life are vividly captured in precisely edited sequences. As marital strife, mounting abuse, and continual moving take their toll, the boy tries to escape, either by running away on trains, or by retreating into a sci-fi fantasy he has constructed for his little brother and himself. Finally, in snowy Hokkaidō
Hokkaido
, formerly known as Ezo, Yezo, Yeso, or Yesso, is Japan's second largest island; it is also the largest and northernmost of Japan's 47 prefectural-level subdivisions. The Tsugaru Strait separates Hokkaido from Honshu, although the two islands are connected by the underwater railway Seikan Tunnel...

, the law finally catches up when the little brother unwittingly causes a fatal car accident. Although traumatized, Toshio tries to help his family elude capture in the final sequence, presented in documentary fashion, describing their arrest.

Production

Upon reading about the real criminal family in 1966, director Nagisa Oshima
Nagisa Oshima
is a Japanese film director and screenwriter. After graduating from Kyoto University he was hired by Shochiku Ltd. and quickly progressed to directing his own movies, making his debut feature A Town of Love and Hope in 1959....

, attracted to the themes of youth and crime, within ten days had assembled a team to construct a film. Not until 1968 did a production company agree to fund the completed screenplay. In September, the 15 person crew began a mobile sequential on-location shoot described by Oshima as cash-strapped and reliant on personal connections to complete, but marked by comradery and high spirits. The role of the boy was cast by searching in Tokyo
Tokyo
, ; officially , is one of the 47 prefectures of Japan. Tokyo is the capital of Japan, the center of the Greater Tokyo Area, and the largest metropolitan area of Japan. It is the seat of the Japanese government and the Imperial Palace, and the home of the Japanese Imperial Family...

 children's homes, eventually finding the young orphan Tetsuo Abe. Abe's own life resembled the fractured childhood of the character he was to play, and he was allowed to join the production with the home's permission. Abe developed warm relationships with cast and crew, who tutored him while the film was being shot.2

Critical Reception and Interpretation

Although popular at the box office, Boy disappointed some critics, who faulted its perceived humanism
Humanism
Humanism is an approach in study, philosophy, world view or practice that focuses on human values and concerns. In philosophy and social science, humanism is a perspective which affirms some notion of human nature, and is contrasted with anti-humanism....

 as a backward step from previous efforts like Death By Hanging
Death by Hanging
is a 1968 film directed by Nagisa Oshima, acclaimed for its innovative Brechtian techniques and complex treatments of guilt and consciousness, justice, and the persecution of ethnic Koreans in Japan.- Plot synopsis :...

and Violence at Noon that engaged with psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis is a psychological theory developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud. Psychoanalysis has expanded, been criticized and developed in different directions, mostly by some of Freud's former students, such as Alfred Adler and Carl Gustav...

 and Brechtian effects. Poststructuralist film scholar Maureen Turim disputes this characterization, arguing for a continuation of Oshima's theme of split subjectivity. The titular boy is between father and mother, "knowing and not-knowing," and paralyzed by fear of abandonment. The fantasy and the psyche figure prominently in the film, both in the boy's relationship to family, and in cinematic techniques like the use of the color red as a "focal point" suggesting the mother and loss.3

Sources

1 Oshima, Nagisa. "Notes on Boy," 1969. P. 170-182 in Cinema, Censorship, and the State: The Writings of Nagisa Oshima, 1956-1978, ed. Annette Michelson. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1992.

2 Ibid.

3 Turim, Maureen. The Films of Oshima Nagisa: Images of a Japanese Iconoclast. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. P. 89-96.

External links

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