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| Director Toshiaki Toyoda |
BLUE SPRING (Aoi haru) B Japan (83 mi) 2001 d: Toshiaki Toyoda
No regrets for my youth. —Kimura (Yûsuke Ohshiba)
An often overlooked, heavily stylized movie about the disillusioned youth-gone-wild high school experience from those already on the edge, who don’t know where they’re going or have any idea where they’ll end up, as they don’t really want to be there, who are so distanced and alienated that they may as well not exist, so they invent violent games to play to force their lives to matter, turning into a nihilistic punk movie with a homoerotic and even gay subtext that is only inferred, never explicitly shown, more metaphoric than real, as it reveals the essence of the horrors of the high school experience through a grotesque and often brutally exaggerated portrayal. Toyoda was a child chess prodigy as an adolescent before changing his interest to cinema, working as a scriptwriter and assistant director on Sakamoto Junji’s CHECKMATE (1991) and BIRIKEN (1996) before launching his own career, where this is his third film. An unorthodox director who likes to do things his own way, featuring a strong grunge/punk rock aesthetic and a willingness to be different, Toyoda has established himself as one of the more interesting contemporary Japanese directors, but not really known outside of Japan. Never mentioned in the same breath as Hirokazu Kore-eda, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, or Takashi Miike, more familiar Japanese directors whose films have reached an international audience, Toyoda’s reputation suffered setbacks from two well publicized scandals, as he was arrested for drug possession in 2005, while in 2019 he was arrested again when a police raid uncovered an illegal antique firearm from WWII that he inherited from his grandmother, falsely as it turns out, as the firearm was no longer working, but he was shunned by the Japanese film industry afterwards, with both events becoming the subject of sensational tabloid coverage in Japan. Often viewed as a cult director, he has an unorthodox, stylized aesthetic that includes youth crime movies, meditative dramas, documentaries, and low-budget art films, whose work is consistently introspective, vibrant, and brutal, but this early film, born in anger, touching a raw nerve, is his most scathing reflection of real-world anxieties in the economic downturn of Japan in the mid-90’s, when an economy that was the envy of the world went into a tailspin, moving from one of the fastest-growing countries in the world to one of the slowest, dismantling the job-for-life system that its corporations had previously offered, literally ripping the futures away from these disaffected kids. Japan experienced an increase in school violence during the 80’s and 90’s, where some disturbing attacks from teenagers made big headlines and shocked the nation, like the Murder of Junko Furuta. First and foremost is the rebellious music, [Engsub] DROP - THEE MICHELLE GUN ELEPHANT 「Blue ... YouTube (6:44), an assaultive force of teen angst that lingers in the imagination, evoking the raw and unpolished spirit of youth, often combined with a free-flowing, slow motion aesthetic from cinematographer Norimichi Kasamatsu, who also shot Junji’s BIRIKEN (1996), less plot-driven, more interested in atmosphere, abstractions, ambiguity, and the chaotic nature of the character interaction, with very limited locations, providing an honest look at the hidden anger and rage of teenage emotions, reaching the depths of the darkest realms.
Coming at a time when the adolescent high school genre already appeared passé, having been graced with a slew of films that touched upon familiar themes of alienated youth, like George Lucas’ American Graffiti (1973), Francis Ford Coppola’s RUMBLE FISH (1983) and THE OUTSIDERS (1983), John Hughes’ The Breakfast Club (1985), Hou Hsiao-hsien’s A Time to Live and a Time to Die (Tong nien wang shi) (1985) and Dust in the Wind (Lian lian feng chen) (1986), John Waters’ HAIRSPRAY (1988), Michael Lehman’s Heathers (1988), Allan Moyle’s PUMP UP THE VOLUME (1990), Edward Yang’s A Brighter Summer Day (Gu ling jie shao nian sha ren shi jian) (1991), Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused (1993), André Téchiné’s Wild Reeds (Les Roseaux Sauvages) (1994), Wes Anderson’s Rushmore (1998), Lukas Moodysson’s Show Me Love (Fucking Åmål) (1998), Alexander Payne’s Election (1999), Shunji Iwai’s ALL ABOUT LILY CHOU-CHOU (2001), and Terry Zwigoff’s Ghost World (2001). Based on Taiyô Matsumoto’s manga of the same title in 1993, a collection of seven different stories, this was the break-through film for both Toyoda and actor Ryuhei Matsuda, who is the undisputed star of this film, appearing earlier as the passive, overly effeminate samurai in Nagisa Ôshima’s GOHATTO (1999). He is the enigmatic figure at the center of this teen drama that looks like it’s taking place in a post-apocalyptic war zone, as this cement bunker of a building is a run-down high school for boys that looks more like a prison, as the dark and grungy hallways are nearly always deserted, accentuated by heavy doses of graffiti on the walls that proclaim gang turf, where there’s an astonishing absence of school authority, while the outside world barely intrudes upon its secluded existence, making this a very unique portrayal, uncomfortable at times yet oddly compelling. An aimlessness seems to define the psychological mindset of these wayward teens, which includes Kujo (Matsuda Ryuhei) his loyal childhood friend Aoki (Hirofumi Arai) who idolizes him, surrounded by a host of others, Yukio (Sousuke Takaoka), Yoshimura (Shûgo Oshinari), Kimura (Yûsuke Ohshiba), a disenchanted figure who dreams of playing on the Nationals baseball team, and Ota (Yûta Yamazaki), who seem to follow their every lead. All dressed in the same dark school uniform, mostly they wander the hallways and bathrooms as a free-ranging gang terrorizing fellow students with impunity, going on rampages inflicting sadistic cruelty at every turn, where their lives hold little meaning, lost to a neverending world of inflicted misery, having been written off by the school long ago as lost causes. Anyone coming from a shitty high school can relate to this, where the mantra may as well be, “Hatred hurts, but an abundance of hatred hurts the most,” leading to a regretful world of apathy and indifference. Never once do we see any parents, while the teachers or school counselors are completely ignored, with students wandering in and out of class at will, instead this is about the social fabric of this underground group that seems to exist on its own terms, unfettered by the rules of society or the school, yet their own hierarchy is completely ineffectual, consumed by a deep-seeded sense of powerlessness in a crumbling social system, exposing a painfully rich subtext of raw, desperate emotion struggling to break through the surface.
Rebellion is the key ingredient to this film, THEE MICHELLE GUN ELEPHANT - Akage No Kelly (赤毛の ... YouTube (5:45), but rebellion against what is the question in this dilapidated school in the suburban outskirts of Tokyo that seems to have no established authority, so they seem to exist in a vacuum, with no future and no past, portraying the loneliness and isolation inside the minds of a hopeless yet excessively violent youth. As if to amuse themselves from the boredom, they invent a rooftop game that is a test of courage, yet also plays into suicidal tendencies, as they stand on the outer railing of the roof with nothing beneath them but ground below, holding on by their hands as numbers are called out in succession. They clap their hands to the same number being called out before latching back onto the rails, each one growing successively more dangerous, as they could easily plunge to their deaths. It’s a modern day version of the game of chicken depicted in Nicholas Ray’s Rebel Without a Cause (1955), where they drive cars off the edge of a cliff, and the last to jump out is the winner. Whoever wins the game is declared the leader of the group, which rules all the gangs in the high school. When Kujo wins the leadership role, Aoki is excited, but he wants his friend to exact violence and revenge to wipe out their enemies. Kujo, however, has no interest in doing this, finding his position meaningless, as he never wanted the leadership position, where his air of aloofness is stunning, bored by the violence and hatred that surrounds him, apparently ruling by disinterest, explaining to a strangely sympathetic teacher, “People who know what they want scare me.” Aoki soon tires of his secondary role, as Kujo hardly pays any attention to him anymore, spiraling into a void, losing interest in everything, so he starts pummeling kids on his own to assert his dominance. In their last year of high school, most kids are preparing for their future, but in this film they have no future, where the only thing that awaits their dead-end path is a place in the hierarchy of the yakuza, a criminal underworld enterprise who recruit directly from the high school ranks, which are little more than a training ground for organized crime, Blue Spring (2001) - best scene YouTube (3:03). Aoki transforms himself into an entirely new look, embarking on a campaign of terror hoping to impress Kujo, but he’s devastated when he instead ignores him and couldn’t care less. As Aoki becomes disillusioned, alienated, and even hostile toward Kujo, who has no interest in the violence of the yakuza lifestyle, friends around them slowly disappear, as whatever friendships or allegiances that once existed seem to have faded away, like a dried up flower. The nonchalance of Kujo and the bleakness of school life are contrasted with the bright, colorful appearance of cherry blossoms in bloom, which are seen everywhere around the school, offering a luxurious glimpse of beauty, with suggestions that more lies beyond what we see onscreen, which includes Kujo, who grows increasingly philosophical, even taking an interest in the flower gardens run by a diminutive teacher (Mame Yamada) who urges him to tend to flowers in bloom, a clear metaphor for adolescence. An impressively stylish time-lapse sequence leads to a stunning finale exhibiting a kind of reckless impulsiveness, Blue Spring (青い春, Aoi haru) 2002 YouTube (6:37), where you literally stare into the eye of fatalistic gloom, and all that’s left is a harrowing sense of unending despair.
