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.
7.5Keywords: child abusefamily travelsfaked accidents
Plot summary
A couple Takeo Omura and Takeko Kaniguchi travel across Japan with their two sons, the eldest, Toshio, who is biologically his but not hers. They are con artists, whose scam is for her to jump alongside moving vehicles feigning being hit and injured, while he, playing the outraged husband, negotiates with the worried driver for an unofficial cash settlement in return for not calling the police reporting the motorist's "guilt". She often does sustain minor injuries from the ruse. She believes that they will continue doing this work until they have enough money to settle down in one place, where he will get a legitimate job. However, he wants to continue the scam indefinitely as he, a veteran, claims that injuries he sustained during the war would prevent him from obtaining that legitimate work. When Toshio reaches age ten in 1966, they enlist him in the con, he now playing the accident victim, with Takeko now playing the concerned mother role. They even manufacture real bruises on Toshio to make the scam more convincing. Like his stepmother before him, Toshio increasingly gets real injuries doing this work. This work takes its toll on their already dysfunctional family, that dysfunction which includes lies, and physical and emotional abuse by both Takeko but most specifically Takeo. That increasing dysfunction is also due to the fact that Takeko learns that she's pregnant again. She wants to keep the baby if only because it will force them to settle down, while he wants her to abort the pregnancy. Toshio has no true perspective of love or life, he only knowing that they need money to live, this work which is the only way he knows to obtain money. He does begin to get a sense that what they are doing is wrong when he witnesses a boy only slightly older than him being extorted for money from older bullies. As an emotional escape, Toshio often thinks about running away, which may not be difficult as his parents allow him free reign while they deal with their own priorities. Toshio also immerses him and his younger brother in a fantasy world where he is an alien from the Andromeda nebula come to Earth to kill all the evildoers of the world.
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Interesting and unpleasant.
Absorbing, unsentimental story of a boy in a family of scam artists
"Boy" is a really interesting movie for a number of reasons but chiefly for the astonishing resilience of its main character, a boy of ten, forced to live a nomadic existence with a scoundrel of a father and a negligent, self-absorbed stepmother.
The parents regularly endanger the boy, letting him throw himself into the sides of passing cars so they can extort money from the "guilty" drivers. Always on the run, the family lives in hotels or inns. When there's money, the father indulges himself in easy living; when money's short or things don't go his way, he slugs his common-law wife or slaps the boy around. He tells the boy his grandparents have no use for him.
The boy lives the life of an invisible kid--no home, no school, no friends, no belongings. It even seems that he has no name--his parents call him "kiddo." There are two constants in his life--his fantasies about salvation by aliens from the Andromeda galaxy, and the company of his little step-brother, whom he regales with talk about the aliens.
There's no sentimentality in this movie. With the powerful exception of the very last scene, the boy looks out for himself and appears quite tough. At one point he runs away, taking a train to some place by the sea. But we get only a glimpse of this place. In the next scene he is back with his parents--because, one has to assume, there really isn't any place for him to go. More than once in this film, the family is on the verge of breaking up, but instead they continue with their nomadic existence and their scams.
So much for traditional Japanese values. The characters in this movie live in a floating world where the old verities don't apply. There are allusions to nationalism and military valor, but these are like vestiges from the dim past.
One of the side benefits of this movie is that we get to see many views of the Japan of the time. One of the irritants of the movie--at least the version that I saw--is the subtitles, whose white letters are barely legible in the scenes set in snowy Hokkaido.
This movie gave me another reason to be grateful for Turner Classic Movies.
Amusing, Sad, Horrifying
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.