Young Thugs: Nostalgia
(Kishiwada shônen gurentai: Bôkyô, 1998)
Miike Takashi
Japan
93 min, color, Japanese (English subtitles)
Review © 2004 Branislav L. Slantchev
Miike claims this is his favorite film to date, and it is easy to see why. Ostensibly a coming of age story, the film avoids all the stupid traps that frequently are the bane of such movies. The problem with how directors typically deal with such material is that they tend to interpret growing up from the grown-up point of view, emphasizing things that adults would find important but children won't. Miike does not do that, he presents childhood from the starry eyes of a child, albeit one in, well, less than usual environment. Only Miike can make such a violent film feel so tender. For once, the subtitle, Nostalgia, is descriptively accurate: despite the rather brutal and sudden eruption of abuse throughout, the film has a celebratory touch. It is an exuberant affirmation of youth, love, friendship, competitiveness, growing up, and real innocence.
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| Discussing the curly black hair parts | Riichi gets rewarded for manly behavior |
I say "real innocence" because this is what innocent children look like unvarnished by the usually maudlin recollections of adults who tend to see kids through the lens of their socialized grown-up personalities. This innocence involves bloody noses and has no place for tutus. It is a realm where catharsis is achieved with a baseball bat and a chain, not by helping dad when he gets home from work or singing paeans to the family unit (like in the awful A Place To Call Home). It is a world where manly behavior is rewarded by friends, foes, and parents alike, and where there is no place for sappy sentimentality. It feel real, and it reminds me of my own childhood.
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| This ain't your mother's Magic Flute | Gratuitous shot of Takaoka Saki |
The film tells the story of Riichi, taking us back into the 1960s, years before the events in Innocent Blood. It is a strange era where hope (expressed by the American landing on the Moon) is mixed with discontent (expressed by the student riots), and where cheery belief in humanity (the World Expo) is juxtaposed with grim reality (toxic sludge). The three friends, Riichi (Nagata Yuki), Yuji (Shimizu Akihiro), and Kotetsu (Yamaguchi Yukio) are growing up in an Osaka slum. Riichi has what you would call a slightly dysfunctional family that teeters on the brink of collapse but somehow always manages to stay together.
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| The loyal opposition | Bravely where no woman has gone before |
Riichi's dad Toshio (Takenaka Naoto) is not a very good husband and father, to put it mildly. He beats up his wife (Karasuma Setsuko), his son, and even his son's school teacher, Miss Ito (Takaoka Saki) when she visits their home to investigate why Riichi constantly shows up with bruises and why he puked in his flute during a music lesson. (This occasions the famous punishment scene in which Toshio stands on all fours and his father shoves a broom stick up his ass.) Toshio sleeps around with the stripper Akemi (Kurihara Saki) and even brings her home after a particularly heavy bout of drinking. Mrs Nakaba takes nearly everything in stride except the overt infidelity of her husband. Through all this, Riichi goes to school, where he spends most of his time leering at the delectable Miss Ito, gets into brawls with assorted street rivals, steals potentially poisoned strawberries, and keeps his sanity by lying in war-era bomb holes dreaming of the future.
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| Pestering the teacher | Swift and unusual punishment |
Curiously, Riichi's bruises are not inflicted by his father even though Toshio does not spare the rod. Miike always shows violence involving adults but somewhat oddly it is without physical consequence: despite the beatings he receives from his dad (and often giving back as good as he gets), Riichi obtains his scars from battling his nemesis Sada and his street gang of heavily bandaged thugs. Interestingly, and in contrast to the violence involving adults, violence involving only children is not shown, but its physical evidence is. So while we do not see Riichi actually fighting Sada, we see them both bloody and disheveled afterwards.
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| Kotetsu, Riichi, and Yuji | Gratuitous shot of Takaoka Saki |
The point Miike wants to make is simple: violence here is endemic but it is welcome. It is not condemned by the members of Riichi's society, and Miss Ito's attempt to stop it is as comedic as it is pathetic. She does not belong to this world and she does not understand it. She fails to grasp that fighting is an essential part of how these boys and men relate to each other, how they define themselves. Manliness is an important concept, and Riichi's grandpa only pronounces him (and Toshio) truly grown up when they get into a scuffle after Riichi clobbers his father with a clock and then a baseball bat.
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| What does she want? | On the road to Shikoku |
That the three main characters are innocent of the ways of the world is brought home by their attempt to flee their surroundings and go to Shikoku (one of Japan's major islands). They don military helmets (German, American, and I assume Japanese), and leave one night in a boat. They end up sleeping in the streets, drinking with homeless adults, going to public bath houses, and interacting with dishonest street vendors who try to sell them telescopes so they can participate in the exhilaration of the lunar landing (everyone in America's got one and is watching!). There is no hint of danger, the three kids effortlessly glide through a world that is neither threatening them nor noticing their existence.
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| Mom, where have you been? | Intergenerational transfers |
Their search comes to an abrupt halt when they realize that they have woefully underestimated the distances on the map: after all, what are children supposed to know about scale or the size of the real world outside their immediate surroundings? Riichi encounters a man who stares at the sea and paints mountains (played by real-life Riichi, Nakaba Toshikazu). Suddenly it dawns on Riichi that it is not important what the reality is, what matters is how one chooses to see it with his imagination. If a guy can see a mountain in the sea, then why not see whatever one wants in the dreary landscape of the shanty-town that looks more like the lunar surface with all these craters and everything. (In fact, it is quite possible that Miike intended it to look that way, and lying in one of these holes magically transports one to the moon in his dreams.)
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| Dad's 10 seconds of fame | Cathartic face-off with Sada |
There is no particular story to the film and there is no moral, it is just a look at what used to be, and Miike succeeds in conjuring up the nostalgic feeling superbly. On-screen, the world breathes and seethes, but off-screen Riichi's life is circumscribed by his immediate environment, the comings and goings of his father, and the constant leaving-to-return of his mother. But this is no treatise on the evil aspects of poor upbringing, and it is unlikely that Riichi would use his childhood as an excuse in court. The children seem genuinely happy, even when they fight, but mostly when they tease Miss Ito and finally manage to undress her exposing her "curly black hair parts". (Incidentally, Takaoka Saki is a famous nude model and one can find her photos on the net.) Still, my absolute favorite scene in the film involves Riichi confronting Sada one on one (complete with spaghetti-western style music evoking the feel of the dusty face-offs set to a Morricone score). Sada unrolls his chain, but Riichi suddenly drops his small stick. For a moment, it looks like he has renounced violence, and a look of startled confusion appears on Sada's face. Then suddenly Riichi bends over, grabs a large metal bar, and charges. Sada's face clears up and he rushes to meet him. The clash (not shown) captures the entire mood of the film very well.
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| Father and son finally become men | Happy Family |
The ArtsMagic DVD features an anamorphic widescreen transfer (1.85:1) with Dolby Digital 2.0 and 5.1 Japanese soundtracks. The English subtitles are optional. The picture is very nice and the sound is clear. The extras include an exclusive interview with Miike, a 9 minute documentary on Osaka people (narrated in English), and the usual talent files, and trailer, along with a translation of the Japanese video cover. A very nice DVD of an beautiful film.
November 1, 2004