Review of Cruel Story of Youth / 青春残酷物語, directed by Nagisa Ōshima

If you’re new here, and stumbled upon this blog through the mythical powers of the Internet, welcome! I know a lot of visitors to my website are people who randomly come upon this website through search engines like Google, but I also do have a lot of visitors who come back. Regardless: my name is Ashley, and I started this blog in order to keep track of everything I’m coming across in the world.

I feel like a lot of my blog introductions, especially when it comes to movies, have been lamenting on the fact I don’t have a ton of time lately. I used to work as a film critic (which, in fact, was so incredibly underpaid that I now make more off of this blog’s display ads than I ever did publishing anywhere else), and then when I was in graduate school I was writing a lot about film, so I used to watch so many movies.

But now I work an 8-5, come home, and then doom scroll my evenings away instead of watching the movies I used to love so dearly. And recently I realized I want to stop doing that, so I’ve set limits on my phone and am fully prepared to sit back and watch more movies and read more books in order to feed my brain.

I elevated this game by acquiring a Criterion subscription a few months back. Before getting my job I was a lot more tight with my money, and although I could technically afford the Criterion subscription, I put it into investments instead. But now I’m investing in my brain more along with my longterm retirement, which is a great feeling.

I’ve been into Japanese movies a lot lately, which is how I ended up watching Cruel Story of Youth. Watching movies from before 1970 has been a big interest area of mine, especially considering I actually did my master’s thesis on colonial Korea (and how terrible the Japanese occupation was there) and writing during that time.

Let’s get into the review!

In post-war Japan, two young people get sucked into a life of violence, sex, and crime to find a thrill.

We meet our female lead in this movie first: her name is Makoto, and she’s looking to hitchhike a ride. When a man picks her up, it seems like she might finally get to where she needs to be, but then he makes an attempt to molest her after agreeing to give her a ride. Kiyoshi, another man, saves her when she needs help in that moment.

Kiyoshi ends up taking Makoto out on the date to watch protests against the US-Japan Security Treaty, which is a real-life event and worth looking up if you don’t know what it entails. They then go to a motorboat on the river, where, after they get to the docks, he assaults and rapes her. That doesn’t stop their relationship, as Makoto continues seeing him.

When she goes to see him at a bar he goes to, gangsters go after her in an attempt to turn her into a prostitute. Kiyoshi comes out and stops them with a bribe, then, when alone later, he rapes her again. Makoto says something this time though, as she wants their relationship to continue, but she sees it not able to do so if he continues to do this to her. From that moment on, these two fall deeper in love, causing a rift between Makoto and her sister.

Makoto moves in with Kiyoshi, and in order to make money, they resort to crime. Makoto uses her charm to seduce drivers, then Kiyoshi extorts them for money when they actually engage with her actions. But when a wealthy man named Horio picks her up one day, Makoto decides not go after him.

She discovers not long after that she’s pregnant and Kiyoshi tells her to get rid of it. She refuses and stops going after a driver, then goes out with Horio. She calls Kiyoshi that night to ask him a question about staying the night there, but he doesn’t pick up and the line is busy.

Meanwhile, with him, he’s visiting an older lover of his. He wants a loan, she gives it to him, then he tells Makoto that he’s giving the money to her. It’s then that she confesses she slept with Horio, which leads to Kiyoshi to angrily seek him out, take his money, and claim that Makoto is someone who just targeted him.

She gets the abortion illegally, then the duo is arrested for their crimes. They confess, manage to get release,d but at the expense of his former lover who helped get them the abortion. Kiyoshi then breaks up with Makoto, then is killed by the same gangsters they borrowed a motorbike from.

At the same time, Makoto gets a ride from a man on the side of the road, like the beginning of the movie, but when he refuses to let her out of his car, she forces her way out and jumps to her death, leading to the end of the movie.

Overall Thoughts

After watching this movie, I didn’t need to do research to know this was probably controversial when it first came out in 1960, but it was a really compelling and different perspective on young people during this time. I feel like a lot of Japanese movies that came out around this time don’t offer a similar kind of story, even though some moments in this film can be difficult to watch at times.

Because of the compelling story I don’t regret watching this film, but I did find it hard to watch. I find violence against women in this manner to be so degrading, and I felt bad for Makoto throughout the movie for thinking she had to stay in a relationship like this. It reminded me of a more lower class and cursed Romeo and Juliet, and it broke my heart in different ways.

I say watch this if you’re interested in the perspective this movie offers. That’ll be the kind of person who gets the most out of a movie like this.

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