Boy (1969) User Reviews

Absorbing, unsentimental story of a boy in a family of scam artists

[bob-790-196018 · 8/10 · 8 November 2013]

"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

[barkingechoacrosswaves · 7/10 · 22 January 2014]

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.

Interesting and unpleasant.

[planktonrules · 7/10 · 9 November 2013]

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.

Oshima explores identity formation

[timmy_501 · 10/10 · 24 May 2009]

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.

Man from Space

[Meganeguard · 15 February 2007]

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.

Strange but good

[Jeremy_Urquhart · 7/10 · 24 April 2023]

Can I call this film dreamy? I don't know if it's wrong to call this film dreamy. Maybe I watched it late at night, at a time when I should've been dreaming. But I don't know... the atmosphere struck me as strange, the use of colour was unpredictable, the whole movie seemed to glide right past me, and there was something unsettling about how it felt.

The story is also a little intense. Maybe more so nightmarish or fever dreamish than normal dreamy. It's about a family who fake motor accidents - as pedestrians - to extort money from drivers. They have their kids involved, and then that leads to extra drama. Things don't play out as expected. Some things never happen, and some happen very quickly. Its arthouse in the "unpredictable structure" sense, but not in the "we're going to be boring and/or pretentious sense," because this film moved well overall.

Nagisa Oshima was a strange but always interesting director. I don't know if I've disliked anything he's done, and films like Death by Hanging and Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence both his me pretty hard. Boy's another solid entry into his filmography, so it seems.

don't waste your time

[edtherevelator · 5/10 · 28 October 2002]

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.

a sample of oshima's greatness

[noonward · 6 January 2014]

'Boy' is, below the surface, a scathing commentary on post-war Japan. The country has been consumed by greed and has taken Western ideals to its hilt. The parents exploiting their son for money strikes into the heart a family that is so far away from the respect and courtesy of old Japanese values.

As a contradiction, Oshima rejects the classical repertoire of Ozu or Mizoguchi and creates a radical language much more to his own invention. The soundtrack unsettles, the camera movement is slow and anxious ridden and the characters push against any sort of likability. The fact that a small boy is the most morally conscious out of a cast of adult characters is especially telling. Also used are still images and colour filters, almost a surefire way to portray the inner thoughts of a young boy who can't adequately express himself. The widescreen filming allows for much detail in the scenes, a rush of intricacies flood each shot. Exquisite to look at but also plenty to think about.

Oshima is usually volatile in his ideas and this leads him to be a not very consistent filmmaker but when his ideas align themselves like this, there are very few who could direct better.