Cruel Story of Youth (Seishun zankoku monogatari)

 

Director Nagisa Ōshima

CRUEL STORY OF YOUTH (Seishun zankoku monogatari)         B+                                      aka:  Naked Youth                                                                                                                      Japan  (96 mi)  1960  ‘Scope  d: Nagisa Ōshima

A sexual relationship with another brings about a connection with all humanity: by embracing one person, you are able to embrace all humanity.                                                                       —Nagisa Ōshima

Inspired by the French New Wave, Ōshima was a motivating voice who helped usher in a Japanese New Wave that expressed a disillusionment and cynicism of postwar Japanese youth, which was a sharp break from the films of Akira Kurosawa, Kenji Mizoguchi, Mikio Naruse, and Yasujirō Ozu, whose cinematic aesthetic evoked older Japanese traditions.  Having come from an aristocratic family, supposedly a descendent from a privileged Samurai family, whose father was a government official who kept a large library, but died when he was only 6-years old, so common among Japanese families whose fathers were lost in the Pacific War, the 22-year old Ōshima quit law school yet aced the Shōchiko studios entrance exam and served a five-year apprentice while seething at the dullness and conservatism of the studio’s films, as did the other directors in Japan’s New Wave, including Yoshishige Yoshida, Masahiro Shinoda, and Shōhei Imamura, all forced to adapt to confining rules.  He left Shōchiku in 1961 in protest over the shelving of his politically charged NIGHT AND FOG IN JAPAN (1960), which was pulled from theaters just three days after its release when Japan’s Socialist Party leader, Inejirō Asanuma, was assassinated on live TV in a brutal stabbing during a nationally televised political debate by a right-wing nationalist, with Ōshima forming his own production company Sozosha later that same year.  While his first film, STREET OF LOVE OF HOPE (1959), a bleak melodrama about class conflict, was a commercial failure, only released in a few small theaters, this second film in his Trilogy of Youth (followed by THE SUN’S BURIAL later that same year) is a dark, shocking, and unpleasant crime film about hedonistic teens that proved to be enormously popular with young filmgoers, viewed at the time as scandalous, capturing the height of political turmoil and massive protests against the 1960 renewal of the highly contentious US-Japan Security Treaty of 1951 that allowed U.S. troops to remain in Japan.  The director, along with much of Japan, was profoundly shaken by Japan’s refusal and/or inability to set its own course after the ending of the American occupation, establishing Ōshima as a leading figure in the generation of young filmmakers who rebelled against Japanese cinema’s status quo.  Refusing to appeal to the collective consciousness of the audience, or echo established forms in any way, the auteur Ōshima followed the example of Jean-Luc Godard with an insistence upon bringing a subjective individuality to his filmmaking, making shocking, disruptive films that sent a new message to viewers, focusing on youth crime, abusive relationships, and the struggles of ordinary people, with no scenes involving actors sitting on tatami mats, while businessmen make frequent use of Western style “love hotels” that offer rooms by the hour, literally forcing the audience to break with bonds of tradition.   

Following the military defeat of Japan in WWII, the surrender of the Emperor meant the defeat of the values he represented, throwing the nation into a state of ideological confusion.  The devastation inflicted on many Japanese cities and the massive loss of life led to an equally devastating moral aftermath of the war with the American occupation, which led to sweeping democratic reforms, yet were perceived as empty promises of a new democratic government, as the exoneration of Emperor Hirohito from wartime responsibility and the release of many war criminals back into society left the people of Japan to bear the burden of guilt and responsibility for Japan’s loss, leaving society in a broken state of open despair.  Parents who were affected by the loss felt a sense of powerless resignation, aligning themselves with the postwar capitalistic boom and the recovery of the Japanese economy in the 50’s, yet their children would eventually fight the right wing government in the 60’s and the shallow offerings that materialism could bring.  Like the young guns from Cahiers du Cinéma, Ōshima was also a film critic turned director, adopting the cinematic aesthetics of the French New Wave’s use of handheld cameras and real-life locations, predominately shooting outdoors on this film, while also aligned with the British Angry young men of the 50’s and 60’s (the film was banned in Great Britain, released in a cut version in 1976, finally released uncut in 2008), Ōshima’s film introduced a transgressive element into Japanese cinema that led to more extreme levels of violence and sex in Japanese cinema.  While Ōshima’s most famous film is his sado-masochistic arthouse movie IN THE REALM OF THE SENSES (1976), which drew the wrath of Japanese censorship, causing an international crisis with its daringly provocative sexuality, this is a jarring, unsentimentalized story about the aimless indifference of the rebellious next generation, where the lessons learned from the war, the sacrifices and hard, self-imposed discipline in the reconstruction era of the 50’s are distant memories in the forming of a New Japan.  Ōshima’s film is a blistering social critique of postwar Japan, set against a backdrop of American materialism, leaving behind a moral void, not only rejecting the new militarism on the right but also the failure of the left to offer a viable alternative to the status quo, introducing original newsreel footage of the 1960 student riots in Seoul, South Korea which deposed President Syngman Rhee from power, and also the May Day demonstration in Tokyo, acknowledging contemporary events of the moment, yet his protagonists are apolitical, where this might be called the Japanese version of Nicholas Ray’s Rebel Without a Cause (1955), only one striking difference is the use of unsympathetic lead characters.  An ode to lost youth, where sex and violence are viewed as rebellious expressions of freedom, like a chain link to the past where you can’t break free, doomed to repeat the same mistakes, as the winds of Japanese liberal social change of the 50’s resembles that same anti-establishment movement during the 60’s in America, with an idealized future that never seems to come.  Many of the characters appear to be trapped within an existential crisis and are seen desperately searching for meaning in their lives, with one of the protagonists bleakly asserting, “We have no dreams, so we can’t see them destroyed.” 

Miyuki Kuwano is Mako, an attractive young teenage girl wearing stylish Western clothes who carelessly hitches rides with older men just for the provocative thrill of it, as automobiles are more fun than trains.  But when one middle-aged man sexually assaults her on the street, she is rescued by another stranger, Kiyoshi (Yūsuke Kawazu), a skinny James Dean figure who intervenes and takes the man’s money, though sadly, after a night on the town, they run off to an industrial lumber yard the next day where he rapes her on a tied-together bundle of floating logs after nearly drowning her to guarantee compliance.  After this manhandling, she improbably falls in love with the guy, who remains a brute, slapping her and throwing her around, treating her like a slab of meat.  He’s a disillusioned college student who dropped out, with professors still teaching classes as if the last twenty years of Japanese history had not occurred, creating a cultural amnesia that these disillusioned youths found repugnant, quickly realizing social change was not going to happen.  Initially he was part of the widespread opposition to the revision of the U.S.–Japan Alliance in 1960, viewed as a blatant act of American imperialism, which led to the massive Anpo protests, the largest popular protests in Japan’s history, but he defies student demonstrations as a waste of time and is instead a small-time thug, creating an extortion scam where Mako takes a drive with a middle-aged man while Kiyoshi follows on his motorbike, and when the guy inevitably makes his move on Mako, he’ll be there to pound his face in and steal his money, Cruel Story of Youth (4K restoration) - Japan Cuts 2015 YouTube (1:34).  They attempt to create meaning in their lives by targeting those who represent what they lack—money.  Afterwards they drive his stolen motorbike into the ocean and make love on a beach.  This works fine until Mako gets sick and tired of being a bought and sold woman, where she’s being dangled like a piece of merchandise.  The family reaction is interesting, as the older sister Yuki (Yoshiko Kuga), who was something of a rebellious child in her own right, part of the first wave of postwar student radicals taking part in the protests against the original 1951 Security Treaty, becoming quickly disillusioned, can’t understand why her own parents aren’t more demonstrative about Mako spending the night with a man, or neglecting her studies at high school, something they made a point of doing when she was growing up.  Makoto’s father (Shinjo Masahiro) accepts the fact that times have changed and you can’t simply put your foot down and expect total compliance, as kids don’t listen anymore, declaring “Times were tough after the war, but we had a way of life.  I could’ve lectured you that we were reborn a democratic nation, that responsibility went hand in hand with freedom.  But today what can we say to this child?  Nothing.  I don’t want to tell her not to do this.”  When the older sister tries to intervene, this only pushes Mako into Kiyoshi’s arms, as she moves in with him on the spot.  While there is instant passion between the two, it’s directed inward so all they see is themselves, spending their time living in a dive, drinking in sleazy bars, and getting into fights with pimps who have their eye on the girl, seeing only dollar signs.  Kiyoshi protects her, but rival gangsters continue to lurk in the shadows, keeping their leering eye on the girl.  Meanwhile, Kiyoshi continues to get secret financial help from an older woman Teruko (Toshiko Kobayashi) who gives him money for sexual favors—another operator working behind the scenes.  

In a nod to Westernized intervention, each of the bar scenes features raunchy jukebox music that alternates between bebop jazz and American rockabilly, a complete cultural break from anything used by earlier Japanese filmmakers, who emphasized more traditional Japanese sounds, yet in the same way there is a staggering cut from the lovers’ heated physical exchange to a churning industrial cement mixer, which is a defiant condemnation of the Ozu-style pillow shot and an adept metaphor for the distance between these doomed lovers and the new Japan being built for a burgeoning middle class that excludes them, exchanging one tired, old patriarchal system for another, disguised under the garb of American capitalism, represented by large American cars and the wads of cash the businessmen carry.  Stylistically removed from conventional cinema, the radical use of Technicolor Cinemascope and a telephoto lens in cramped interior scenes further isolates the protagonists from their surroundings, creating a claustrophobic feeling of oppression, portraying the dark side of sexual norms, including exploitation, violence, and subjugation, marked by a theme of masochism found in later Ōshima films, which is especially prevalent in his most controversial film, IN THE REALM OF THE SENSES (1976), forcing the audience to re-think the established concept of social reality by being forced to “re-see” it on the screen, actually heightening the emotional realism of the story.  This dizzying juxtaposition of polar opposites is also reflected in the constantly changing moods between the young lovers, who are emblematic of postwar anxieties, generational malaise, and cultural changes in Japan, caught in a vicious web of violence and destruction, often compared to Godard’s young lovers in Breathless (À Bout de Souffle) (1959), though with a complete absence of romanticism, perhaps best represented by a heartfelt plea from Mako, asking “Why can’t you treat me better?”  She may as well have been asking the same from her embattled nation.  With constant turmoil and bottled-up emotions, this film makes clear just how impossible it was to be an independent-minded Japanese woman in the early 1960’s, reaching its lowest point when she announces her pregnancy and all he can think about is money for an abortion, failing to even consider the possibility of having a future together.  Mako may want to love him, blind to all other possibilities, but it’s here she realizes his vulgar limitations.  In one of the strangest scenes in the film emphasizing his crude ways, Ōshima shows him gulping down an entire apple in real time as he hovers over her still anaesthetized body after the operation, Cruel Story of Youth 1960 / Nagisa Oshima YouTube (1:31).  But these two have no future together, have no real connection to anything at all.  There’s a strange detachment to these characters all along, who are perceived as lives in free-fall, yet we’re as intrigued by their impulsive behavior as we are repulsed by their own crass indifference.  Stuck in a cycle of regret and weary capitulation to their individual fates, Ōshima’s ultimate message is undoubtedly nihilistic, lacking any hope for the future, which can be read as a message that Japanese society was failing to find its own cultural, social, and political identity and can be seen as a call for change and renewal.  As if hatched from an American B-movie, and not distributed in France until 1986, the film is credited with saving Shōchiku studios from bankruptcy during the rise of television and the fall of cinema attendance in Japan, pre-dating many of the much later modern films of youth culture alienation, including nearly all of Hong Kong director Wong Kar-wai’s films, which fill the screen with magnificent neon colors and a pulsating sensuality.  Shot by Takashi Kawamata, the bright colors are garishly out of place (intentionally avoiding the color green, Nagisa Oshima: Banishing Green, so he took great care to exclude trees and shrubs), especially in the industrial wasteland where they wander, featuring industrial noises and documentary style images of massive construction taking place, images evoking the actual building a new society, with Ōshima using long takes, extreme close-ups, distorted angles, and odd geometric shapes to go along with a jittery, handheld camera style where any hopes of equilibrium are skewed by the restless instability of adolescence, where poor decisions and immaturity prevail, portraying a heartless, disconnected world filled with a cold dissonance.   

Seishun Zankoku Monogatari (Cruel Story of Youth) - Review ...  excellent video review (with Engish subtitles) by Italian film critic Adriano Aprà (with spoilers in the last minute or so) on YouTube (8:26)

Cruel Story of Youth (1960) Watch HD - Vídeo Dailymotion entire movie on HD with English subtitles on YouTube (1:36:47)

2024 Top Ten List #10 The Missile (Ohjus)

 

Director Miia Tervo

THE MISSILE (Ohjus)                      A-                                                                                    Finland  Estonia  (114 mi)  2024  ‘Scope  d: Miia Tervo

Matti Nevala stood in the snow, looking sorrowfully at his melancholy tractor.                            —Esko, The Lapland News editor, hilariously reads aloud to Niina the lame introduction to her first story

What starts out as a zany comedy quickly turns into something else entirely, plunging into a more complex, in-depth examination of dysfunctional relationships and the havoc they wreak, as the abuse of domestic violence is beautifully interwoven into a tale of Finland’s subordinate relationship with Russia, as in each case bullying is the significant factor, requiring a radical shift to overcome an inequitable power dynamic that is emotionally and psychologically damaging.  Led by a phenomenal performance by Oona Airola as Niina, a fragile and insecure woman who transforms herself from a meek, easy to push around single mother of two children whose opinion matters to no one, to a confident, well-informed journalist who suddenly becomes an expert on the dangers of nuclear proliferation, refusing to be pushed aside by authorities as she continues to probe into matters of a government cover-up of mammoth proportions.  Part of what works so well is that she is such a tender, warm-hearted person, so to see her violently brutalized in such grotesque fashion is extremely affecting to viewers, adding an underlying dimension to this historical saga of Cold War political posturing and maneuvering, asking whether it’s possible to fully comprehend the danger lurking under the surface.  In some ways, this potentially disastrous international missile crisis bears a resemblance to Kubrick’s theater-of-the-absurd characterization in DR. STRANGELOVE OR:  HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE BOMB (1964), perhaps the ultimate in Cold War satires.  Born and raised in the Finnish Lapland, writer/director Miia Tervo studied film at the Turku Arts Academy before completing her degree in documentary filmmaking at the Helsinki University of Art and Design.  Tervo’s adept storytelling weaves a seamless connection between the past and present, finding ways of defusing decades of national anxiety with a mix of melancholy and deadpan humor, offering a profound exploration of how historical dynamics continue to influence contemporary politics, as this beautifully directed film offers an unglamorous depiction of Scandinavian banality, where alcohol and cigarettes are everywhere, balancing outrageous humor with the in-depth complexities of the characters, accentuating the eccentricities of local personalities with the seriousness in the overall turn of dramatic events, with Niina continually finding herself in ludicrous situations, as authorities blatantly refuse to acknowledge the dire predicament they face.  Plunging viewers into a world of everpresent ice and snow may remind viewers of that sarcastically irreverent tone of the Coen brother’s Fargo (1996).  What starts out as a pleasant family outing, with Niina chopping down a small tree with her two children in tow, frolicking in the wintry snow of an immense forest, quickly turns into a disaster, as the cart carrying the tree comes unhitched, careening down a hill and crashing through a storefront window of a local business establishment in town, The Lapland News.  Apologizing profusely to the proprietor, local newspaper publisher Esko (Hannu-Pekka Björkman), Niina has no money to pay for the extensive damage, so she offers her services, willing to work to pay off her debt.  Initially given minor assignments, staying out of everyone’s way, like searching through the archives for material, she’s surprised to discover a general lack of seriousness in their coverage, where gossip or offbeat human interest stories with a local flair dominate what they print, where their biggest story was about a sock falling into an ice fishing hole, as according to Esko, “Nothing ever happens here.” 

This absurdist dramatic comedy is based on the real-life incident in 1984 of a Soviet SS-N-3 Shaddock surface-to-air missile straying from the Barents Sea, violating both Norwegian and Finnish air space before crashing into Lake Inari, or Inarijärvi, the largest lake in Sápmi, a sparsely populated area located in the northern part of Finnish Lapland (speaking their own dialect), some 150 miles north of the Arctic Circle, (retrieval of soviet missile which landed in finnish waters 28 ...).  While driving to her sister’s wedding, a thunderous sound can be heard off in the distance echoing through the skies, disturbing the quiet of the forest, with radio reports quickly revealing that a missile was fired into Finland from the Soviet Union, which becomes the backdrop of the film.  While Niina wants to pursue this story, aware of potential ominous ramifications, as it might have been carrying a nuclear warhead, where the damage to the pristine environment could be disastrous, Esko has other ideas, as he doesn’t want to upset the locals with such depressing talk.  Despite her limited knowledge as a reporter, Niina throws herself into the story anyway, refusing to accept the military’s explanation that this is a matter of no consequence and nothing to worry about, mocking her interest as simply misguided, rudely dismissing her as a woman while subjecting her to sexist discrimination, where even her family has a hard time taking her seriously, too self-absorbed to give the matter any thought, routinely accepting the word of authorities, believing she’s out of her league.  With her abusive ex-husband Tapio (Tommi Eronen) in prison for assault, the frequently overwhelmed Niina has to take care of the children alone.  Making matters worse, she just lost her bakery job before Christmas and she’s facing personal challenges, not the least of which is her ex-husband is expected to be released soon from prison.  Despite having no training beyond writing “poems about ponies” in school, Niina launches a one-woman investigation into the slowly developing mystery, laboriously searching through the archives, interviewing every quirky character in town, becoming a fervently educated voice for a misinformed community.  The tension escalates when a contingent of serious-looking Finnish military brass descends on the local hotel, but refuse to offer any explanation to the press, with the film illustrating a stark contrast between a secretive and tight-lipped Finland and the more freely reported news in both Norway and Sweden, as Finland could simply not admit that it was a missile.  Looking for leads, Niina strikes up a relationship with a handsome Finnish Air Force pilot Kai Repola (Pyry Kähkönen) who witnessed the incident, hinting that an errant Soviet nuclear cruise missile may be involved.  Their rapport turns intimate, an unexpected romantic diversion, while at the same time Niina’s sister Kaisa (Emma Kilpimaa) has her own wedding that she does not wish to be spoiled, while Niina’s own dysfunctional relationship with her domineering mother Hanski (Milka Ahlroth) is quite striking, as her mother still views her as a child and apparently can’t help but undermine Niina at every turn, continually devaluing her sense of worth, exposing yet another layer of past trauma and abuse, so when her mother says that Finland is a country troubled by a sense of inferiority and unworthiness, Niina knows the feeling.

Sharing a one thousand mile border with Russia and a 1948 border agreement (Finno-Soviet Treaty of 1948 - Wikipedia), the Finnish government initially classified the incident as a UFO.  And while hotel owners were happy with the extra business, including an international press clamoring for information, this becomes the biggest international news event in the history of the Inari region, turning into a real media circus, where the government was simply not interested in making this a matter of consequence, and was certainly not interested in airing possible differences in public.  In an era of political uncertainty, on the eve of US-Soviet disarmament talks in Geneva, where United States Secretary of State George Shultz was about to meet with Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko, governments downplayed the incident, where at first the Soviet Union made no comment, while in Finland soldiers scoured the border area by helicopter and snowmobile in the bitter cold, with officials quietly checking with Moscow to see what had happened, as apparently a missile escaped from a military training exercise during a target test.  While the missile itself fell in Inarijärvi, Tervo’s film was actually filmed in Pelkosenniemi and Kemijärvi, where the Kemijärvi Cultural Centre is transformed into the fictional restaurant-hotel Tunturipeikko, with the director claiming “We wanted a film to have a milieu built on locals, not tourists.”  To that end, despite the grim implications, local eateries take advantage of the situation by creating rocket-themed fish dishes and missile-shaped donuts, which quickly sell out.  Making light of the incident is an all too human reaction, with the military continuing to downplay any significance, yet their very presence in such large numbers defies that position, with Niina continually pressing them on just exactly what happened, where her archivist position at the newspaper allows her to fully investigate other incidents and the devastatingly harmful impact on the environment, becoming one of the more persistent voices of the community, and an irritant to the military who grow tired of seeing her.  As Niina obsesses about the missile’s truth and the nation’s boundaries, she confronts the truth about her own personal boundaries, as her overcontrolling ex-husband is released from prison and wants to spend more time with the children, even hoping they could pick up the pieces of their marriage with promises of change, but it is only a matter of time before his true colors show themselves with a horrifically brutal beating, which is simply a shocking development, putting everything else in perspective, where unchecked power has a way of steamrolling its way through malicious, out of control behavior.  This humanized development is extremely effective, where the bully on the block shows its true stripes, as the film masterfully captures the essence of mistreatment and humiliation, reflecting the harsh reality that the citizens and the nation must learn to defend themselves against abuse.  Niina’s persistence in hounding the military for the truth finally pays off when they discover the missile is submerged under the lake, and she’s invited to watch the rather precarious retrieval, which is witnessed by the entire international media and world.  The period soundtrack is fabulous, with Bronski Beat’s No More War, No More War (Remastered) YouTube (4:01), Alphaville’s Forever Young (“…are you gonna drop the bomb or not?”), Alphaville - Forever Young (Official Video HD) YouTube (3:42), and Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark’s Enola Gay, Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark - Enola Gay (Official ... YouTube (3:34), fittingly playing while Niina and her family drink in excess and dance in slo-mo, where the irony is not lost that they could soon be obliterated.  The way this film deflects an enormous distortion of reality through absurdist humor and outlandish local character makes this a delight to experience, effortlessly evoking a myriad of emotions while crafting an amalgamation of contrasting genres and tones, becoming a moving essay on the importance of self-worth, accentuated by such an empowered, deeply humane performance by Oona Airola that makes this immensely appealing.