Sorry about tomorrow's day. In each family, a child is raised in their own way. Someone instills interest in music, someone - love for the country, and someone - the need to earn from young nails. And not the spread of newspapers, but jumping under cars with simulated injuries. Few drivers will want to contact the police - it is easier to pay off the victim, the more enterprising dad grows up like out of the ground with the appropriate offer. So flourishes a specific business family of four people: father, mother, boy and his younger brother. They wander from city to city, the whole of Japan for them is a map with scattered crosses, indicating treasures. A less risky and more legal path for a head of family who considers himself a war invalid is unacceptable. "Work is work," he impresses a ten-year-old boy and shows him how to cry properly. Another life is possible only in the dreams of the child, and at least in it he does not feel alone. No more is allowed.
It is believed that even the most difficult things are better to say in simple language. The boy’s words, which sound like confession, permeate every frame of the film with cold longing. The film is based on a semi-detective story published in the press and gave Nagisa Oshima the opportunity with the help of one family to burst into a critical pamphlet addressed to his own country. The accumulated contradictions in the political system led to the devaluation of human relationships. Increased social stratification turned peace-loving people into angry wolves, driven by the desire to survive. Instead of raising children, taking care of them and instructing them, commercial instincts based on the ideology “if everything is bad for me, then let others do it no better” have ascended to the imperial throne. If in the family, manifestations of love sound only in dreamy stories told by the older brother to the younger, then the bottom is very close. It seems that wisdom and patience have left Japan forever, leaving it to deal with a difficult legacy.
Oshima never shunned to talk seriously about difficult topics, but in The Boy he decided to do with satirical references. After another “business” the family stays in a hotel, where he orders artists. The war song at dinner, with its insistent refrain "everything was abandoned," explains the nature of the moral impasse the Japanese have fallen into. According to his long tradition, Oshima takes the post of observer, as if giving the heroes the opportunity to swim out of the stormy sea of delusions. The director does not expose anyone directly, but delicately leads to the understanding that the roots of all ills are not parents and narrow rulers, but war. She continues to kill people after her graduation, but she does it more sophisticatedly - expelling love from her heart. Desperation takes over people not immediately, but gradually. But when that happens, there is usually no way back. The few remaining manifestations of feelings are shown by the author with amazing trepidation. How a boy cherishes a bright yellow baseball cap given by his mother! The child’s gratitude is so great that he already chooses the next car to throw himself under. These are the sprouts of love in a broken soul, and how perverted the sense of duty becomes.
Devoid of meaning, life is turned into a slice of episodes, between which there are often no connections. The choice is ambiguous, but in this way Oshima sought to convey a sense of personal savagery and emotional emptiness that first pushes the child to escape and then compels him to return. It is noteworthy that the details of the boy's return are omitted - as if such is fate, and there is no escape from it. From such fragments, the director collects his film, releasing anger only when it is impossible to do without it. In national symbols alone, no one has to wait for salvation, and it is no coincidence that the Japanese flag at Oshima is a meaningless banner if there are no normal families in the country. Each for himself and alone with a harsh reality. When there is no hope left, the picture of the film fades, the colors fade, and only grayness reigns around. The monochrome episode contrasts sharply with the film's colorful opening and the boy's black kitten standing out among beige streets. Simple cinematic reception tells a lot about the soul of the director and demonstrates his contempt for people who have come down from the path of virtue. The extreme degree of despair is felt so clearly that it seems that one can only be saved by jumping into the Sea of Japan from the shores of Hokkaido.
According to the rules of growing up, a person must go through all stages of his development. Deprived of childhood, the company of peers, real love and care, he, like a puppy thrown out on the street, will still vigorously seek a better share, only with the accumulated negativity in the soul. Personal drama causes a human drama, and therefore the global conclusions of Nagisa Oshima are rather disappointing. Frequent “guests” in the frame are abundant meals, as if simple stuffing of the stomach is a worthy substitute for family harmony. Naive boyish fantasies about himself as a messenger from the Andromeda Nebula may be more useful than a degraded society. In The Boy, even the law is more of a convention. He fixes the stages of the “big family path”, but does not give them a moral assessment. With this classic Japanese cinema copes independently. Oshima, like a doctor, diagnoses the disease of the nation and demonstrates an extensive map of the affected organism. Ascertaining the neglected state, the director, however, does not deprive the “patient” of the most important thing – the belief that only he can deprive himself of regrets about the future.
