|
The children of '69, adrift in the mom-and-pop scam operation of contemporary Japan. Dad (Fumio Watanabe) blames his indolent belligerence on "war wounds and diabetes," the stepmother (Akiko Koyama) negotiates a troublesome pregnancy and hurls herself into traffic to collect settlements from drivers. Meanwhile, the boy (Abe Tetsuo) plays hide-and-seek with himself and regales his toddling half-brother (Tsuyoshi Kinoshida) with stories about Andromeda spacemen. Soon enough, the 10-year-old takes his place in the clan's soul-bruising ruses: "Remember, no taxis and no fast cars, delivery trucks and female drivers only." Tabloid headlines dictate the structure, Nagisa Oshima fills it with mordant societal prisms and desolate, subtly alien colors. Midway through, the characters treat themselves to a fancy meal at a geisha inn—a servant sighs admiringly about their surface unity, yet the view remains from the lost child's vantage point. (Peeping through a hole in the wall, the boy breaks the family tableau down into isolating vertical gaps.) Does it take such materialistic pressure to disfigure the domestic unit, or has harmony always been an illusion, like the graceful families of Ozu or the unseen grandmother the young protagonist vainly tries to run away to? The chilling development is from bustling ghost cities to a blue-ice countryside inferno, "the edge of Japan" that exposes the new generation's muted cry even as it falls on deaf ears. "I don't think anything about anything." "Now go play somewhere." Can something so acrid really be Oshima's most "conventional" and "humanistic" work? The Meet Me in St. Louis snowmen have a telling cameo, Kiyoshi Kurosawa in Tokyo Sonata revisits the central image (inquisitive child as tiny imperial uniform in snowy void).
--- Fernando F. Croce |