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5 out of 5 people found the following comment useful :-
Problems in Post-War Japan, 22 September 2006
8/10
Author: Mar-Cinema from United States

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.

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6 out of 9 people found the following comment useful :-
Con artists, 4 February 2003
Author: ayeroxor from Tampa, FL

Based on the true story of Iwao Nakamoto (1922 - ?) & Hatsue Deguchi (1939 - ?).

A chance accident caused one of the Japan's most controversial series of crimes in the 1960s. When Deguchi received in April 1966 the then considerable sum of 20,000 yen from the driver of a car that hit her and caused a minor injury, she and common-law husband Nakamoto struck on a plan that would earn their family millions of yen.

The pair forced Nakamoto's 10-year-old son and their 3-year-old son to walk hither and yon, but especially into the sides of slow-traveling cars. Once they'd been hit, the kids promptly hit the ground and pretended that a fatal blow had struck them.

The tears would flow freely and Nakamoto would rush across to the party "at fault" in the accident and demand compensation in return for not suing them. The family worked on the scheme for months until they were finally caught.

They ended up pulling off about 60 scams that netted them over 2 million yen. Renowned director Nagisa Oshima used the story to make the hit 1969 film "Shonen," the proceeds of which he used to pay for his controversial movie "In the Realm of the Senses."

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2 out of 2 people found the following comment useful :-
Man from Space, 15 February 2007
Author: Meganeguard from Kansas

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

From 1968 to 1971 Oshima Nagisa would direct five films that would not only receive critical acclaim in his native Japan, but would also spread his name to foreign markets, especially America and France. These films were: Death by Hanging, Diary of a Shinjuku Thief, Boy, The Man Who Left His Will on Film, and Ceremony. Of these five films Boy is considered to be the most straightforward while the others, especially The Man Who Left His Will on Film which is considered to be Oshima's most difficult film, were entrenched in the traditions of modern Japanese theater and the theatrical craft of Bertolt Brecht. Whereas the other four films have a very limited plot and the cohesion of their various stories seems weak, Boy is very cohesive and, for Oshima Nagisa at least, almost formulaic. However, being that this is an Oshima film; the film might not be quite as formulaic as it first appears.

Like many of his films, Boy is grounded in fact. In the year 1966 a couple was arrested for faking traffic accidents, they would pretend to be hit by cars while "crossing" the street, and extorting money from the drivers. However, what truly struck the Japanese populace as outrageous was that they used their ten-year-old son as a tool in this scheme. Newspaper headlines read: Accident-Faking Couple Uses Child," "The Criminal Journey of the Demonic Accident-Faking Couple," and "Five Months of Strange Devotion in the Parent-Child Accident-Faker Scheme." The story faded from the headlines in a couple of weeks, but the story rooted itself in Oshima's brain and he was determined to create a filmic version of the odd series of crimes even going as far to scrounge orphanages to find the perfect "Boy" in the figure of Abe Tetsuo.

Starring the always impressive Watanabe Fumio as the father and Oshima's wife Koyama Akiko as the (step) mother, the story unfolds from the perspective of the Boy as his family travels around Japan ripping off unsuspecting victims. Actually it is only the mother and the boy who do the actual ripping off, because the father has old war wounds and is unable to "work." However, this definitely does not prevent him from indulging in the money that his son and wife "worked" for. Normally living in squalid, rented homes, after the boy or his mother earns a fair amount of money, the father is quite quick to spend it on fine hotels, food, and alcohol. Being well aware that the boy is unhappy ripping off unsuspecting people and moving from place to place, the father tries to instill in his son that his grandmother and friends have already forgotten him and that they were glad that he left. Despite these words, the boy does run away a few times, but he can never get too far from the oppression of his father.

While seemingly not as artistic or complex as some of Oshima's other films, Boy does examine such topics as the powers of imagination and guilt driven obedience in good detail. Definitely a film not to be missed by fans of Japanese New Wave Cinema.

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1 out of 1 people found the following comment useful :-
Oshima explores identity formation, 24 May 2009
10/10
Author: timmy_501 from United States

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.

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8 out of 17 people found the following comment useful :-
One of the Best from a Giant, 11 March 2004
Author: Rob Williams from Los Angeles, CA

There are many great aspects to this film. Here are a few:

1. Believe it or not, I like to look at this film as a fusion of epic (western) and noir, which makes sense since in his best films, I think Oshima out Godards Godard.

2. The idea that the protagonist and POV in the film are a young kid who is kind of waking up into a dark, dirty world is a great device; it is not the usual coming of age setup, but rather a premature coming of age. The film plays like a great tragedy that has as its motive underlying force a tawdry little scam.

3. It seems more timely than ever considering the emergence of the victim culture.

4. The direction is fantastic.

Oshima is one of the great directors. It's remarkable how varied his body of work is. He manages to make works that have lots of ideas in them, but that don't get lost or muddled like so many other pieces from the same period (late 60s/early 70s especially).

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1 out of 25 people found the following comment useful :-
don't waste your time, 28 October 2002
5/10
Author: edtherevelator from Cleveland, OH

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.

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