Everything Goes Wrong

Jiro is young and angry. His father died in the war. His mother is involved with a businessman; the man is married and gives her money. Jiro will not accept it. He does everything he can to end the affair and each attempt makes things worse. He is inside the same world himself: he commits small crimes with his friends, chases easy money and keeps pushing away the girl who loves him. The narrative watches a young man spend his anger in a way that will help nobody. Seijun Suzuki directs. It was made at the Nikkatsu studio. It is among Suzuki's early works and the formal excesses of his later films are still limited here. The subject is the postwar generation; the relation of the young to the past and to the order of money in the years when economic growth was starting is treated directly. The register is hard and no character is redeemed; the narrative ties itself to no moral conclusion. The mother is written outside the usual shape of the genre; she makes her own decisions and does not ask her son's approval. The black and white photography and the use of the wide frame are in the Nikkatsu manner of the period. It is short and the narrative is direct; the film explains nothing anywhere. Who it is for: anyone curious about the Japanese new wave and early Suzuki. Who it is not for: the characters are unpleasant, the narrative hopeless, and the structure simple.