Smithbotchan

     Botchan was a really nice flick. The producers and writers and whatnot put together a great summarization of a classic Japanese novel that felt as natural as an original work. However, the camera angels and the liberal use of stills sometimes made it seem like one of those terrible PBS fairy tale interpretations (whatever those are called). That being said, I really enjoyed Botchan on the whole.

     One thing I like about Botchan is the fact that the hero of the story isn't really a great guy.  The only fully sympathetic moments he has revolve around his old lady best friend, Kiyo. I believe she was his nanny or something, but I like to think they were also lovers. Anyway, as soon as Botchan is faced with responsibility or important decisions, he tends to react in a pretty extreme and disrespectful fashion. On his first day of night duty at a boarding school full of middle schoolers, he decides that it is more important for him to completely break the rules of his brand new job and go swimming at the hot springs. Gee whiz! Botchan's rash pattern of behavior also presents itself in his encounters with his students. For example, When they present him with an equation that he is unable to solve, he totally freaks out and yells at them. As soon as I saw that I was like seriously, bro? They are twelve. Take it easy. Naturally, Botchan's relationship with his students only gets worse from there. The students have eyes all over the place and they use them to track Botchan and mock him for his recreational habits like swimming laps in the hotsprings or eating too much tempura.  Botchan handles his assailants by calling them stupid and indiscriminately accusing them of trespassing against him.  As you can imagine,  his strategy does not exactly work out. The irony of Botchan's reactions is that they make him look pretty stupid and the students are not really the bad guys.
   
     Botchan's oppressers (the real bad guys), the principal and vice principle, treat him as tactfully as possible while cleverly deceiving him and besting him with their wit.  Of course, Botchan triumphs against their evil, but he also loses his job and nothing super consequential happens to the bad guys.  In this regard it would appear that Botchan suggests the futility of hot-headedness and the ultimate supremacy of intellectual methods of problem solving. In another sense the film presents a message about standing up against one's opressors and following your <3.