Werft die Bücher weg und geht auf die Straße (1971)

Werft die Bücher weg und geht auf die Straße: Directed by Shûji Terayama. With Eimei Sasaki, Masahiro Saito, Yukiko Kobayashi, Fudeko Tanaka. An angst-ridden teen dealing with his dysfunctional family hits the streets. The story is inter-cut with various psychedelic, energetic vignettes.

“Throw Away Your Books, Rally in the Streets is the first experimental feature film by Shuji Terayama, a poet, playwright, avant-garde director who was also an avid boxer (his love of boxing is referenced several times in this movie, for example). It follows a nameless young boy, whom Terayama calls Watashi (u0026quot;Meu0026quot;), and whose family is a complete dysfunctional wreck. His sister has an unhealthy relationship with her pet rabbit, his grandma is a shoplifter, and his frustrated father takes u0026quot;Meu0026quot; to the whorehouse.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eThe story is completely non-linear, interfused with strange phantasmagorical collages, music videos and surreal imagery. A lot of scenes are colored in nauseating filters of green, red and pink, which are even more annoying in occasional motion sickness-inducing shaky cam scenes. Thereu0026#39;s also a scene of random people longing to find soul mates and putting a newspaper ad. Another repeated element are u0026quot;Meu0026quot;u0026#39;s day dreams, which see him trying to fly away on a plane, but his hopes of getting somewhere are ruined in the scene where he calls out the country of Japan for a moral decline, and his fiery plane comes crashing down to earth.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eThe message of the film is presented bluntly in its title. Terayama tells the academics that their approach to this film simply isnu0026#39;t needed. A film should be experienced, not analyzed, and people should spend time on the streets instead of spending it at a cinema or reading books (this message would be more understandable if city life were as crazy as a Terayama film). This message is featured everywhere in the film. Quotes from famous thinkers graffitiu0026#39;d on the walls. An intellectual in a restaurant boring his female companion to death by talking about literature (and later weu0026#39;re given a more entertaining take on books from a local prostitute). The recurring riddle u0026quot;What goes one way in and two ways out?u0026quot;, which weu0026#39;re lead to believe the answer to is something deep and intellectual, happens to be revealed simply as u0026quot;a pair of trousersu0026quot;.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eTerayama also breaks the fourth wall a lot to establish an anti-cinema approach to filmmaking. The movie begins with an uncomfortably long black screen, when suddenly u0026quot;Meu0026quot; appears, asking the audience what theyu0026#39;re doing sitting in front of a black screen, and then mocks them because theyu0026#39;re hidebound in a theatre while heu0026#39;s free to do whatever he wants, like light a cigarette. The ending is about 10 minutes long; in it, the entire crew is gathered in a single shot while u0026quot;Meu0026quot; holds a speech about the boundaries of cinema (u0026quot;Polanski, Nagisa Oshima, Antonioni… All that is just a world that disappears when the light is turned onu0026quot;). After that, the camera trails the faces of everyone involved with the film in close-up and the film fades to black.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eI forgot to mention the countless locker room scenes where u0026quot;Meu0026quot; and the other boys discuss masturbation techniques and how sports ball sizes are parallel to virility. I guess these scenes are meant to portray u0026quot;Meu0026quot;u0026#39;s frustrations related to masculinity. Later his locker room friends gang rape his sister under the shower and weu0026#39;re subjected to a short musical sequence spoofing Ken Takakura, a famous macho movie star known for yakuza films.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eRegarding the soundtrack (by Tokyo Kid Brothers and J. A. Seazer, who appears as a long-haired poet), itu0026#39;s awesome. Probably one of the best movie soundtracks Iu0026#39;ve heard in a while. Itu0026#39;s like a mix of nursery rhymes and post-hippie psychedelic rock. Itu0026#39;s crazy. One of the musical scenes starts with a burning American flag which reveals a couple having sex and youngsters raising chaos on the streets. After that, a humorous scene where a young girl protests because people took her phallic punching bag off the streets explodes into an angst-ridden, energetic song u0026quot;Who is it for?u0026quot; But by far the catchiest and the most radical tune is what I presume is called u0026quot;Motheru0026quot;, which even borders on Oedipusu0026#39; complex (another running theme in Terayamau0026#39;s films). The imagery the song is set to is an American comic (the style reminds me of Robert Crumb) where a father has sex with his daughter after he sees her masturbating, after which the mother asks her son if he jerks off. Trying to follow this comic while reading the song lyric-subtitles while trying to enjoy the song is a complete sensory assault and itu0026#39;s hard to find anything similar. Did I mention the short musical interlude that features a group of schoolgirls casually stripping on a farm, singing how theyu0026#39;ll become prostitutes?u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eThe movie, as I described it, seems completely crazy, fun and incomprehensible, but unfortunately the scenes of true cinematic weirdness are sandwiched between long scenes of dubious importance which border on tedium, and overall the film is largely undeserving of its runtime. Iu0026#39;ll give it a higher rating just for the kick-ass soundtrack though.”