Attention, do not read on if you do not want to be spoiled on this short film. I trust, however, that if you're coming to IMDb to read about a little 20-minute movie that can easily be found on YouTube, then you've watched it already (as you should).
Others here have done a fine job praising the virtues of this movie's revolutionary (pun intended--as you'll see) film style and cinematography. Those tributes are well-deserved and universally accepted. On the other hand the message behind "A Day with the Boys" seems to be greatly misunderstood; almost every review I've read online or heard on a podcast has had a different take on what the movie's trying to tell us.
What seems to be a common mistake--from my point of view--for many viewers (and reviewers) is that they take the movie at face-value; that is, they don't seem to "read-into" this film at all. For them the short is a horror movie about boys who lure people to their deaths by tricking them into thinking they're all innocence when in actuality they're cold-blooded killers. I was dumbfounded when I first read this kind of take, and nonplussed when it was repeated over and over by those promoting Gulager's short on various horror sites.
I don't understand how a movie that toys with convention throughout most of its runtime could possibly be mistaken for intending a very literalistic ending. By its constant, unique use of cross-cutting and overlapping images, I felt--from my initial viewing--this movie was preparing me to see this a twist on a concept . . . it wanted me to understand it was going to overlay the playfulness of these boys with something else. It turned out that "something" was some of the absurd sensibilities of adulthood.
For me, the message of this film trumpets the lunacy of wartime behavior--particularly in men. It was made at the height of the Vietnam conflict when the public's outrage at the atrocities (at times) committed by our own "civilized" military was most vocal.
The director is very effective at showing us how insane it is that innocent, playful, friendly boys without a care in the world can grow up to become people who treat other humans as nothing more than an object to kill and roll into a ditch. At the same time he's showing us the madness of how a normal, work-a-day businessman--or golfer, librarian or even a little girl playing with her dollies--can just be going about his life one day, and the next unexpectedly become the fodder of war.
Gulager is brilliant at superimposing these realities upon one another in an effort to wake the public up. How could these fun, carefree little boys commit such barbaric acts? The truth is they couldn't--it wouldn't be possible . . . until you add a few years and the right circumstances onto them. Then they, and everyone else around them, can forget who they used to be; now, as adults, they've set aside those ridiculous, childish notions of innocence and fun and are dealing with important, serious issues that require the death of others! Now, as adults, it's perfectly sensible to kill businessmen, librarians, mothers, little girls and anyone else who happens across their path--within certain contingencies.
To me, that's the message of this movie in spades. It is chilling--even more than when viewed as a "Children of the Corn"-type of horror movie. If that's how you saw it when you watched it ("Children of the Corn"), then please watch it again.
I've always wanted to see something--a book, a movie--portray the absurdities of war from this point of view. The first time such a perspective dawned on me was when I was required to interpret the famous poem of Thomas Hardy in high school, "The Man He Killed." The poem's about the craziness of shooting down a man during battle, a man who, in any other circumstance, he might treat to a drink if he met him at a tavern. The last lines are:
"Yes; quaint and curious war is!
You shoot a fellow down You'd treat, if met where any bar is,
Or help to half a crown."
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