The classroom is a factory where the machines have stopped pretending to work.
To look at a child is to look at a site of pure, unchanneled production, a "schizophrenic out for a walk" who has not yet been fully captured by the molar aggregates of the State, the School, or the Family. In Tetsuya Nakashima’s Confessions, this walk becomes a sprint toward a nihilistic horizon. We are introduced to Yuko Moriguchi, a teacher whose voice is a flatline, delivering a terminal lecture to a classroom of students who are not subjects, but a "collective of desiring-machines" plugged into their cell phones, their hormones, and their cruelty. As Deleuze and Guattari (1972/1983) suggest, "everything is a machine," and here, the classroom is a socio-technical assembly line where the product—the future citizen—has come out as a glitch, a virus, a murderous anomaly (p. 2).
The dairy of death and the HIV-positive whisper.
The film begins with the cold, white aesthetic of milk. Milk: the ultimate signifier of maternal nourishment, of the primary flow from the breast-machine to the mouth-machine. Moriguchi interrupts this flow. She informs her students that she has spiked the milk of "Student A" and "Student B" with HIV-positive blood. This is not merely a gesture of revenge; it is a deterritorialization of the biological flow itself. She turns the "maternal gift" into a "viral debt." In this moment, the classroom ceases to be a space of education and becomes a laboratory for the "Body-without-Organs" (BwO). The students are suddenly stripped of their social identities and reduced to their biological vulnerabilities.
Moriguchi’s genius lies in her refusal to use the Law. She knows that the juvenile justice system is a "molar apparatus" designed to preserve the status quo, to "protect" the child while stripping them of their agency. By bypasses the police, she engages in a schizoanalytic strike. She targets the "micro-fascisms" inherent in the youthful subject—the desire to be noticed, the desire to dominate, the desire to remain unaccountable. Foucault (1976/1978) noted that power is most effective when it is capillary, and Moriguchi’s revenge is a capillary invasion of the students’ very bloodstreams.
Oedipus gets a bomb for graduation.
The central motor of the film’s tragedy is "Student A," Shuya, the "boy-genius" electrician. Shuya is the quintessential victim of the Oedipal triangle. His life is a desperate attempt to "plug back into" the Mother-Machine. His mother, a brilliant academic who abandoned him, represents the "transcendental signifier" of his existence. Every act of cruelty Shuya commits—the killing of the teacher’s daughter, the creation of the website, the plan to bomb the school—is a "cry of desire" directed toward a phantom.
"The first thing that the schizo-analysis does is to discover in the subject the nature, the formation, and the functioning of his desiring-machines... to get out of the theater of representation and into the factory of production." (Deleuze & Guattari, 1972/1983, p. 322).
Shuya is stuck in the theater. He is performing "The Child Who Needs Love" while actually operating "The Machine That Destroys." His mother’s abandonment didn't just leave a hole; it created a "line of flight" that he turned into a line of death. He believes he is an artist, a creator, but he is merely a "repetitive machine" mimicking his mother’s brilliance to gain her gaze. This is the "maternal superego" at its most lethal. Lacan (1981/1993) argued that the failure of the "Name-of-the-Father" leads to psychosis, but here, the "Name-of-the-Mother" is so overwhelming that it prevents any symbolic world from forming at all. There is only Shuya and the Screen.
The panic of the B-student and the domestic massacre.
If Shuya is the "active-destructive" machine, Student B, Naoki, is the "reactive-stagnant" machine. Upon hearing Moriguchi’s confession, Naoki collapses. He stops bathing; he becomes a shut-in. He enters a state of "catatonic deterritorialization." He is trying to become a "Body-without-Organs" but fails because he is still haunted by the "Mother-Machine" in the form of his doting, delusional mother.
His mother represents the "fascism of the home." She refuses to see her son as a killer; she sees him only as a "poor, misunderstood child." This is the "familialist trap" that Reich (1933/1970) warned about: the family as the primary site for the suppression of revolutionary desire. When Naoki finally snaps and kills his mother, it is a messy, biological attempt to "sever the cord." But in the schizoanalytic sense, he doesn't free himself; he simply "explodes the apparatus" without having a new territory to inhabit. He is left as a "fragmented subject" in a house of blood.
Anarchy in the playground: the myth of childhood innocence.
We often treat children as "pure" beings, but Confessions suggests they are "proto-fascists" in training. They are aware of the "codes" of the adult world and use them for sabotage. The "juvenile law" that Moriguchi critiques is a form of "bureaucratic capture." It assumes that the child does not have "subjective density." Moriguchi proves otherwise. She treats them as "full subjects," which is the most terrifying thing you can do to a child.
The youth of today, as depicted in the film, are "fully aware of the horrors" they create. They are not "innocently" cruel; they are "intentionally" cruel. They have replaced the "God of the Father" with the "God of the Viral Video." Their subjectivity is not formed through "internalized morality" but through "externalized clicks." This is Baudrillard’s (1981/1994) hyperreality: the act of murder is only real once it is "uploaded." The students in the classroom don't react to the death of the child; they react to the reveal of the story. They are a "spectator-collective."
The school as a site of intensive surveillance and viral feedback.
Moriguchi does not "teach" her class; she "codes" them. She sets a series of "if/then" statements into motion. If you bullied Student A, then you will be outed. If you try to be a hero (like the new teacher, "Werther"), you will be humiliated. Moriguchi operates as a "distributed network." She is no longer in the building, yet she is everywhere. She has become the "software" of the school.
This is the transition from a "society of discipline" to a "society of control" (Deleuze, 1990/1995). In the disciplinary school of Foucault, you are watched by the teacher. In the control-school of Confessions, you are watched by your peers' cell phones, and Moriguchi is the "admin." She doesn't need to punish; she just needs to "adjust the permissions."
The final cut: existential montage as the ultimate weapon.
The climax of the film involves the "ultimate de-coupling." Shuya has rigged a bomb to blow up the graduation ceremony, believing he is ending his "pathetic" life and taking his "unworthy" peers with him—all to get his mother’s attention in the afterlife of news headlines.
But Moriguchi has performed an "existential montage." She moved the bomb.
When Shuya presses the button, he doesn't blow up the school. He blows up his mother’s office. He kills the "Object-Cause of his Desire." In this moment, the "Oedipal machine" is not just broken; it is incinerated. Moriguchi’s final words to him—"Just kidding"—are the ultimate "schizo-shout." They reveal the "arbitrariness of the signifier." She has stolen his narrative. She has left him "suspended in the abyss of his own freedom."
Conclusion: The Walk Continues.
Confessions is not a film about "justice." Justice is a molar concept. Confessions is a film about the "politics of the molecular." It is about how desire, when captured by the "Mother-Machine" or the "State-Machine," turns into a "death-drive." Moriguchi is not a "good person"; she is a "functional machine" that has decided to "produce destruction" rather than "reproduce the system."
The "youth of today" are not "lost." They are "found" in the wrong circuits. They are "anarchists" who have been given "bombs instead of crayons." The only way out of the "parade of objects" and the "milk of blood" is to "stop the machines of representation" and "start the machines of production" that do not require the "approval of the mother" or the "protection of the law."
As we walk away from the debris of the graduation hall, we realize that the "confession" was never for the students. It was the "sound of the gears turning" in a world where the "analyst is dead" and the "director has left the set."
References
Badiou, A. (2005). Being and event (O. Feltham, Trans.). Continuum. (Original work published 1988)
Baudrillard, J. (1994). Simulacra and simulation (S. F. Glaser, Trans.). University of Michigan Press. (Original work published 1981)
Deleuze, G. (1995). Negotiations (M. Joughin, Trans.). Columbia University Press. (Original work published 1990)
Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1983). Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and schizophrenia (R. Hurley, M. Seem, & H. R. Lane, Trans.). University of Minnesota Press. (Original work published 1972)
Foucault, M. (1978). The history of sexuality, Volume 1: An introduction (R. Hurley, Trans.). Pantheon. (Original work published 1976)
Lacan, J. (1993). The psychoses: The seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book III, 1955–1956 (R. Grigg, Trans.). W. W. Norton. (Original work published 1981)
Nakashima, T. (Director). (2010). Confessions [Film]. Toho.
Reich, W. (1970). Character analysis (V. R. Carfagno, Trans., 3rd ed.). Farrar, Straus and Giroux. (Original work published 1933)
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