Shonen - Boy (Oshima Nagisa 1969)
In the current film, entitled Boy (Shonen / 少年), the narrative is depicted and narrated through the eyes of an unnamed 10-year old whose father and step-mother have embroiled him in risking his life in order to fraudulently demand money from unwary victims. The tale is based on a true and widely circulated story which hit the Japanese media and created an immediate furor.
Claiming an inability to hold down a normal job due to injuries incurred in the Sino-Japanese War, a shiftless father forces his young son and second wife to fake being hit by passing cars in order to extort large sums of money from hapless drivers. Though both the boy and the step-mother increasingly have reservations about their participation in the crimes, the violent demand and dominance of the father keeps them in line. With neither love nor sympathy for anyone but himself, he ruthlessly drags his family into a perpetual state of fleeing from the authorities, moving to a different town or region following each extortion.This, of course, has prohibited the boy from attending school and thereby making friends. Instead of fun and games with children his age, he often finds himself alone, constructing ever greater imaginary worlds through which his young mind slowly processes the dysfunction and abuse his budding conscience perceives. While his role in the fraud increases as he more fearlessly steps in front of moving cars, his soul grows increasingly agitated and estranged. And while he longs to return home to see his true mother and grandmother, he believes, as his father has told him countless times, that they no longer remember him and would be greatly saddened to see his face again. In this tightening vice, between being forced to do the wrong and a profound sense of isolation, the young boy struggles to make sense of the world and his place within it, passing from naivete to escapism to looking death squarely in the face.
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