Boy (Oshima, 1969): ICA Cinema, 4pm
This film, which is also screened on August 12th, is part of the Nagisa Oshima season at the ICA Cinema. You can find the full details here.
Time Out review:
Coming-of-age stories don’t get much bleaker than Nagisa Ôshima’s
tale of a preadolescent who assists his itinerant family in moneymaking
scams. But it’s the kind of cynicism that invigorates and energizes—a
bracing dose of misanthropy that is nonetheless suffused with robust
empathy for its hardened juvenile protagonist. Based on an actual
incident, the film follows ten-year-old Toshio (Tetsuo Abe), his father
(Fumio Watanabe), his stepmother (Akiko Koyama) and his infant brother
(Tsuyoshi Kinoshita) as they trek across Japan, stopping in each new
location to fake traffic accidents and extort money from stunned
drivers. It’s a true nomad’s life, with high highs (a night spent in a luxury
hotel with copious food and geisha attendants) and very low lows (Dad
beating Mom for refusing to get an abortion). Though filmed in teeming
real-world locales in what occasionally seem like clandestine
circumstances, the movie has the feel of the science-fiction stories
that Toshio tells to his sibling. Ôshima often situates his characters
at the edges of a rigorously composed widescreen frame that emphasizes
the oppressive architecture of a rapidly modernizing nation. He also
employs visual distortions like monochrome tinting and image squeezing
to suggest the skewed perspective of his corrupted young lead. Happiness and contentment are not in the cards for Toshio, and Ôshima
never sentimentalizes his existence nor lets him off the hook for his
crimes. But still we feel, deeply and profoundly, for this lost soul.
Keith Uhlich
Here (and above) is the trailer.
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