Beginning in a busy metro setting, I Just Didn’t Do It quickly becomes a creative and truthful account of the guilty-until-proven-innocent ideology, sterility, and hypocrisy of the semi-Napoleonic legal code and praxis in Japan. It sets up the story for what ultimately becomes the subtle psychic on-the-spot condemnation of a young boy (Kaneko), for the presumed ‘groping’ of a young girl his age, despite being pushed into a jam-packed metro car by a guard. It also sets up a moral code that sets up its subjects in such psychic and physical alienation from each other, that “groping” becomes a social epidemic in need of eradication.
The speed of these events directly contrast the slow (near-idle) developments of the no-less-than-12 court “hearings,” eventually summing up a boys fate in a tragic nutshell. In a society where 99.9% of suspects are prosecuted and sentenced — the process becomes indicative of the fatalistic legal process in power. For those who’ve read Kafka’s “Before The Law,” this film will offer a cinematic rendition of the countless “gatekeepers” our young man encounters in his battle for innocence, absolution, truth. Click for more…
Coupled with delightful humor and the accused’s unforgiving conviction, Suo Masayuki renders complex subject-matter with entertaining, and witty clarity; also showing us the solidarity between people and a devoted maternal love between mother and sun. Kaneko, having absolute faith not just in his innocence but also those who represent him, surrenders himself to a seemingly impartial apparatus, but is crushed by what is a true (and I feel, overly negative) surprise that should not be disclosed to the reader. See it for yourself.
PHOTO CREDIT: VIFF Media Library
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