Crazed Fruit: Some Thoughts

The screen adaptation of Shintaro Ishihara's second novel, Crazed Fruit, ran on TCM some time ago.

I understand the movie has been recognized with a place in the Criterion Collection.

I have not read the book. But if the film is at all representative of it, it seems that Ishihara, who has screenwriting credit, simply reshuffled the elements of his first book, Season of the Sun--snotty rich college kids who spend their time playing on the beach and with boats, going to nightclubs, trying to get laid and getting into fights; some "tough" talk about generation gaps and the worthlessness of ideas next to action that comes off as the pseudo-macho, pseudo-intellectual drivel of posers; a conflict between brothers over a girl with more than a little history, and a proneness to manipulate and use men, with the younger brother the more susceptible and the older the more tough-minded; and just so we know the author's serious, the culmination of all that in sudden, violent death. We also see plenty of certain unattractive elements more pronounced in his other writing, and out of which he made a political career--like racism and xenophobia with which a certain amount of sexual baggage is nakedly mixed in. (Yes, there is a "The foreigners are here to take away our women!" element in this particular mix.)

The result is a piece of sh--excuse me, melodrama, inadequate to support the movie's 86 minute running time.

An interesting note: in addition to furnishing the source material and the screenplay, Ishihara also appears in the movie. And not just appears. With the camera focused on his face he bullyingly declares "I'm Ishihara!"--just in case we didn't know. And this alter ego of his, also named Ishihara, who happens to be part of a pack of snotty rich college kids having a run-in with the aforementioned pack of snotty rich college kids (in this case, also members of the Tokyo U wrestling team) participates in beating up the film's star, Shintaro Ishihara's real-life younger brother, the "James Dean of Japan," Yujiro Ishihara.

So basically Ishihara, going far beyond a subtle Alfred Hitchcock-like cameo, announces on camera that he is indeed Ishihara, then physically attacks his younger but more celebrated sibling on camera.

Make of that what you will.

In light of, well, everything the man has done since.

Interestingly, it seems Francois Truffaut was impressed, so much so that his seeing this film led to a collaboration between the French New Waver and the ultra-rightist who would call French a "failed language" (1962's Love at Twenty).

Make of that what you will, too.

I know I do.