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青い春 'aoi haru'10/10dir. Toshiaki Toyodaavailable free w. eng subtitles hereThere is such an intimacy in violence, such a domesticity, such matyrdom, such monarchy in touching with claws. Within boyhood, there is a fraction, or perhaps a hereditary gene that denotes this struggle for social power, this structure of predator and prey, king and court jester, man and wife. This social economy deals only in respect, which in itself is earned in ones ability to curate a legend for themself; we are all familiar with highschool legends, the bully rumoured to have killed a man with his bare hands, the girl who has never said no to a dare, the kid who claims to have fingered Janey Q. in the janitors closet. In your teenage years, your projected self is your most valueble asset, and ultimately, a waste of time. Kujo, Aoki, and other such characters embody style of rough-glamour protagonists of 80s action movies, but with a self-conciousness that begs the question of truth, gall, and presentation as they influence control. The bravest is king, and the stupidest is the one who fails in his attempts to gain kingdom.There is much to be appreciated in the use of language in the film, the combination of english and japanese graffiti and slang is one of many signifiers of the influence of american idealism on the non-american world. The boys, many involved with or terrorized by gang violence turn to increasingly vicious attacts and dares after losing their baseball championship. 'Americas passtime' has promised these boys livesw as pilots, mathmeticians, presidents, and ripped it clean from their fingers. Excuse the reach, but it could very easily serve as a critque of the 'american dream' and a worldwide facination with it. You just keep trading bullsh*t for more bullsh*t, except this time youre a long way from home surrounded by a very unforgiving and delusional people.Another admirable feature is the masterful costuming (first created by Taiyō Matsumoto, whos manga served as the basis for the film), especiallly notable since each of the boys' are restricted to an identical uniform. the attitude and attention to detail both contribute to and, if i may be so vain, form the boys identities; you could see the crowd of schoolchildren from an airplane window and be able to call each of them by name. this is not, as some might feel, a grasp at action hero hairspikes or the loose-tied bad boys of the 70's punk scene, rather, it is a rebirth of rebellious fashion in a hierarchal setting, each dye-job, cufflink, and shoelace signifing a members role in the social structure. The chalkboard scene is striking in conversation and illustration- Kujo's graceful outline of something like a man, Yukios violent tag, overlapping 20 or so others just like it. One still salvagble by his society as a functional man and student, the other cut free by his own hand. The boys must deny themselves their humanity, their hope. Kimura in the depths of his criminal life, after baseball (white uniform, purity) is torn away for gang life (black uniform, corruption). He sacrficies his hope, his flower, his american dream, his failure. He climbs into the black car, devoured in darkness, and thinks about his mother, his youth, in a past tense. Yukio, as he is dragged away in a cop car, can finally confess his pathetic dellusion. "I am going to graduate". His last words before 'death' willing to claim hope and accepting a desire for normality, a desire refused to him by an education system that simply does not care.The boys, recklesss, stupid, hateful, plant flowers. They bend to solve soil over unborn things, almost gentle, their lack in cruelty found only in passive obedience. It shouldnt be lost that the only adult they actually like is the school gardener- both are held at mercy of the more powerful factuliy figures of the school, both groups are left unappreciated, underestimated, seeing in each other their past and future. 'Stay in school kids- or else you'll end up like him'. After the boys talk of unpromising grades (and under the guidance of Hanada-sensei), they are able to work towards growth in the physical, in the simple and nurturing. A race measured not in violence but in perserverence. In the walls of the school, the two are really the same thing. They label their flowers with a cigarette, each marked with the name of the boy assigned to it, a sign of boyhood and glamour-filth, a thing that kills next to a thing that lives to live. The theme of clarity flows as an overcurrent in the boys' story, and can be found in the simplist of visual cues- who is allowed to look at the camera? Who is allowed to address the audience so boldly? Kujo, for one. He is clear in his continual re-realization that none of these playground games actually matter or mean anything, and that the only way on to adulthood, to freedom, is through. The other is Yukio, clear in his method of domination, outside of the Clapping Game- cruelty. The act of cutting hair is striking in such a film. An act so consumed with vanity and domesticity, an act of brothers and mothers and sons and small children, an act in art and servitude, the soothing feeling of release, the quiet shocks when someone brushes a spare strand from your face, gentle in unconciousness. To cut hair is an act of love- to destroy that hair is an act of severance. To pierce a crafted being, to pierce a known face, to mark yourself as gone. It plays into kujo's ostracization and insult at the hands of aoki. image is everything. Violence comes in many variations. The cold precision of kujo versus the manic carelessness of Aoki. Fighting boys who spit in your face, fighting boys calling for their mother, an enemy or an inferior. Naked boys being batted into deep water (a literal perversion of the sport) emasculation as the utmost tool for power. Violence in its most dehumanizing, and in the background, Kujo, playing soccer, missing goal after goal, failing in boyhood. They erase a beaten boys face, literally taking paint to skin, removing guilt, removing empathy, removing harm. The very same paint erases kujos dominance, tags painting over old masters, replacing his marks with Aoki's. And what is this action halted by, none other than Kujo's ball crashing through the window- his failed attempts to relive his youth, the only thing to halt Aoki's tyranny. Youth resurfaces in not only what is yearned for, but what is petty. Aoki passing notes in class, like a schoolgirl asking a playmate, "are you mad at me?". So insecure, all ties to the outside world forged on unstable grounds. This desperation restart sandbox love, this mourning over old friends, this willing amnesia in vain efforts to cure the need for seperation. Growing old is becoming lost to people you were once dependant on. Being torn between adolecense and adulthood is becoming violent towards those who claim to understand you. Aoki breaks a boys arm for even daring to think he is tied to this condescending f***er, this boy who has abandoned him. If love is violence, this film is about casualties. Even in their brutal confrentation, youth is apparent. The hair pulling, the sloppy hits, the threat of death. Even their violence matures, from trivial urges to a blind lust to cut themselves free from eachother. And yet, still unable to let go. Aoki has covered their sanctuary, the music room, in darkness. He too, has been erased. His dream was to become a pilot. He wanted to rule the skies, and now he covers the world in a shade of richest earth, desolate, without life.He has become what the world believes of him, and what impending adulthood will make of him, a shadow, and echo of a person. He can't be blamed, not really. Its just bad luck. Kujo predicted it from the start- he knew that youth makes corpses of people who like to sink their nails into 'the good old days'.Aoki paints his hands black and crushes kujos domain in his palms, he paints the floor black in his shadow, his final stain upon the earth. He imitates a friend who has become lost to him, he wears his skin in hopes of overtaking him. He watches the world pass him by, in his costume. (i couldnt get the boy to kill me but i wore his jacket for the longest time)We hear Kujo and Aoki's first meeting, as children, plastered over footage of the two from the beginning of the film. We hardly recognize them, in the face of the echo of their youth, the pair who are strangers to each other now. A plane shadows aokis face- a dream just out of reach. His cheek-hands could almost touch it. His last thoughts are a plea; kujo. Take me with you into adulthood, because I cant let go of my youth. Theres an image cherry blossom on aokis desk- purity, life, artifical grasps at the real thing, idealized images of the unattainable. While in the garden, only kujos flower blooms. He is the only one willing for persistent care, persistant love, even when they have been refused to him, even what fate has left his friends behind. It's about loosing your childhood, never having a childhood, having it ripped from your raw and stumbling fingers. That is the great tragedy of this film. Maybe some flowers never bloom, but all flowers are meant to bloom.
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tired
adventurous
crazy
cheerful
loved
angry
hyper
bouncy
crunk
calm
stressed