Shonen (1969)

User Rating:

8.2/10   

Director:

Nagisa Oshima

Writers:

Masato Hara (writer)
Nagisa Oshima (writer)

Release Date:

9 April 1970 (USA)

Genre:

Drama

Plot Keywords:

One Word Title

Awards:

3 wins

Cast

Tetsuo Abe	...	The Boy
Fumio Watanabe	...	The father
Akiko Koyama	...	The stepmother
Tsuyoshi Kinoshita	...	The little brother
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
LoLo Cannon
Do-yun Yu	...	Victim driver

Also Known As:

Boy (USA)

Runtime:

105 min | USA:97 min

Country:

Japan

Language:

Japanese

Color:

Color (Eastmancolor) | Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Finland:K-8

Company:

Art Theatre Guild

Problems in Post-War Japan

Nagisa Oshima indulges us in the true story of a Japanese family who made a living completely off of staged hit-and-run accidents. I remember seeing an article stating that this was Oshima's mainstream effort. The color and the widescreen format appear to be a bold departure from some of Oshima's more experimental efforts. It is accessible to those who want to know more about the famed director. However as with most of his films, it is filled with themes of non-conformity and slightly leftist ideals.

The protagonist of the story is the oldest boy in the family. This 10 year old lives his lonely life with his criminal parents dreaming about spacemen and wanting to see the ocean. He has a baby brother and the family appears to be quite apathetic to the boy, possibly in order to spend their time with the newborn. The boy casually runs away a few times in the film, but the family doesn't go looking for him, knowing that he will eventually return. The lad is not fond of his stepmother, but he is not happy around his dad either. His first time running away was to see his grandmother, who had given up on raising him for some unknown reason. This departure leads way to a funny, but tragically stinging scene at a train station.

Besides the boy's isolation, the family uses him for their blackmailing schemes. In the beginning, his stepmother would run in front of oncoming vehicles, but a certain situation will not allow her to participate anymore, so she teaches the young boy. He is then the source of the family's income. They begin to travel through most of the four islands of Japan looking for innocent drivers to swindle money from. The father of the family is an ex-con and a World War 2 veteran and refuses to find a job to bring in income. Obviously, tension between all members of the family arise and things turn for the worse.

As bleak as this story is, Oshima does not take a traditional, cruel moralist view on the situation. He makes every attempt to understand the motives behind crime, just as he did brilliantly in Death by Hanging. His insight allows the audience only to make judgments on the actions of the characters with adequate information on their past histories. I believe this thorough thinking about the unwanted members of society could greatly improve the court system and the societal outlook at large.