青い春 dir. Toshiaki Toyoda
People who know what they want... they scare me.
Blue Spring has been bookmarked for months and I just got to see it tonight. I discovered it on tumblr (dun dun dun... no surprise there) because of... honestly? Their uniforms. Also, the cinematography.
I think it's pretty obvious that the film is about teenage years because of their high school uniforms. To me, the film captured adolescent despair really well. Especially the confusion during your teenage years. This film actually made me think back and refreshed a lot of memories from my secondary school days. When I was attending a neighbourhood school, I was actually really confused with what the fuck was happening around me because I came from a convent school. And this film captured it really well, a lot of kids around me wanted to join gangs or act like they were in one just for the "cool" factor. Hierarchy was always important, even in this film, even in society but I can't be bothered with that.
I finally transferred school on my third year but actually got into another school which was filled with even more gangs or at least wannabe gangstars. Though I would see fights or hear stories happen often here and there, I didn't bother much about it because honestly... I always found it stupid and childish and just kept to myself. I think that's why I really liked two characters in this film - Kujo and Yukio.
The soundtrack for this film was also A+. I especially like how punk rock music was used to drain out Ota's bragging to Yukio in the bathroom stall before Yukio decided to kill him. That was pretty hilarious to me but in a really dark and twisted way. The film itself is pretty grim, but I enjoyed every second of it.
I went to do some research and turns out that Blue Spring is based on a novel by Taiyo Matsumoto (creator of Tekkonkinkreet). I can actually see some similar themes, like how Kuro depends on Shiro in Tekkonkinkreet, Aoki depends on Kujo a lot and when Kujo alienates him, he self-destructs. Very similar to Tekkonkinkreet. The cinematography for this film is really beautiful as well, explains all the nice gifs I always see on tumblr.
Even though this film was released a long time ago, I'm glad I only watched it now because I wouldn't have understood any of it back then. Also the quote "People who know what they want... they scare me." would have been something I could relate to as a teenager but not as an adult. I thought that quote was a really strong one - it really expresses adolescence.
This film definitely made me want to watch All About Lily Chou-Chou again. Instantly one of my favorite (depressing) films.
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