BATTLE ROYALE
dir: Kinji Fukasaku
"Life is a game. So fight for survival and see if you're worth it." - Teacher Kitano
Brief Synopsis
In the future, in order to control population and regulate the collapsing manditory education system, Japan devises a "Battle Royale" act where random classes of high school students are left on an island full of weapons with one instruction: be the last one standing.
Why It's Here
Battle Royale is a film whose basic premise alone is suspect in logic but irresistible in it's unbelievable "Lord of the Flies with machine guns" concept. My curiosity to what the hell this movie actually was peaked and I simply had to see it. And it's true, it's a movie that has to be seen, it can't be described.
The plot hole to bullet hole ratio is fairly even, but that's irrelevant. While there is some sort of whacked-out social commentary (that enthusiasts claim was lost in the translation from the original manga series) it's a movie that is really about the action. Sure, you can try and read into the degradation of society, the isolation of youth, the insecurity of high school students and their peers, but the plot has a weak structure and there is really very few ways to logically explain why the government would want to randomly drop a group of kids on an island with the instruction of blowing each others brains out. Thankfully, Fukasaku realizes this pesky conundrum early on and proceeds to ignore attempts at logic in favour for stylized violence and sheer brilliant comic relief. When one of the students demands answers to this ridiculous system, the instructor promptly screams at her and tosses a knife square into her forehead. A nice little message for those annoying nitpickers in the audience wondering the perfectly reasonable question of why these kids haven't even heard of this on-going program where their peers are getting systematically murdered. Fukasaku's response is to shut the fuck up and watch the hilariously light hearted instructional video informing us and the kids of how they will die and what to do to survive.
For all the failed attempts at social commentary, including a failed attempt to point fingers at "The System" which created such a sinister program, the most successful element of the film (besides the violence) is the relationships of the characters and the theme of teenage mentality in general. Treated as real people, the teenagers in the film all express different qualities of generic cliques with more honesty than 98% of the teen-targeted garbage that's pumped out monthly from Hollywood. These characters are different, in a way that might even have impressed John Hughes. The stuck-up girls are vicious to each other blaming them for stealing boys or declaring their jealousy or hatred for another. Others show their compassionate nature, the girl that was impossible to not get along with. The nerds reside on their computers trying to find a flaw in the system and are predictably set back by the more brash do-then-think tough guys that think they own the jungle. The relationships are all familiar, but in a setting of machine guns and live-or-death situations, all of the social formalities are ignored and the characters reveal their true feelings in full emotion.
Much of the western world rejected Battle Royale as vulgar and disgusting. Traits that Asian films often get labeled with by American audiences that see graphic violence of any kind as the same evil. The more trained eye however, (and by trained I mean knowing the difference between a cartoon and Saving Private Ryan) will notice that Battle Royale appears as an anime series lifted from the drawing board and pulled into reality. Every action and expression is exaggerated by each actor from the dramatic fling of the switchblade at the first kill to the students timed reaction to the freshly dead girl's nearly slo-mo collapse acts in heightened reality. From behind the camera, shots using fast pans, short-but-sweet zooms enhance the action and remove any sensation of reality elevating the film into comic entertainment. Even the sound effects are over done. But that is not to say this film is a joke, please don't mistake my position on it. This is a very brutal film, but it far from a realistic one. The violence is intense, and at some times cruel, but it always feels like fantasy which suites it perfectly.
I wouldn't recommend the film as a strong example of biting commentary, but it is a enormously entertaining film that is very different from anything else, stylistically inspiring and unique, and most importantly it carries a large diverse cast of characters that all work in the grand scheme of things, fitting together just right.
08/18/09
The plot hole to bullet hole ratio is fairly even, but that's irrelevant. While there is some sort of whacked-out social commentary (that enthusiasts claim was lost in the translation from the original manga series) it's a movie that is really about the action. Sure, you can try and read into the degradation of society, the isolation of youth, the insecurity of high school students and their peers, but the plot has a weak structure and there is really very few ways to logically explain why the government would want to randomly drop a group of kids on an island with the instruction of blowing each others brains out. Thankfully, Fukasaku realizes this pesky conundrum early on and proceeds to ignore attempts at logic in favour for stylized violence and sheer brilliant comic relief. When one of the students demands answers to this ridiculous system, the instructor promptly screams at her and tosses a knife square into her forehead. A nice little message for those annoying nitpickers in the audience wondering the perfectly reasonable question of why these kids haven't even heard of this on-going program where their peers are getting systematically murdered. Fukasaku's response is to shut the fuck up and watch the hilariously light hearted instructional video informing us and the kids of how they will die and what to do to survive.
For all the failed attempts at social commentary, including a failed attempt to point fingers at "The System" which created such a sinister program, the most successful element of the film (besides the violence) is the relationships of the characters and the theme of teenage mentality in general. Treated as real people, the teenagers in the film all express different qualities of generic cliques with more honesty than 98% of the teen-targeted garbage that's pumped out monthly from Hollywood. These characters are different, in a way that might even have impressed John Hughes. The stuck-up girls are vicious to each other blaming them for stealing boys or declaring their jealousy or hatred for another. Others show their compassionate nature, the girl that was impossible to not get along with. The nerds reside on their computers trying to find a flaw in the system and are predictably set back by the more brash do-then-think tough guys that think they own the jungle. The relationships are all familiar, but in a setting of machine guns and live-or-death situations, all of the social formalities are ignored and the characters reveal their true feelings in full emotion.
Much of the western world rejected Battle Royale as vulgar and disgusting. Traits that Asian films often get labeled with by American audiences that see graphic violence of any kind as the same evil. The more trained eye however, (and by trained I mean knowing the difference between a cartoon and Saving Private Ryan) will notice that Battle Royale appears as an anime series lifted from the drawing board and pulled into reality. Every action and expression is exaggerated by each actor from the dramatic fling of the switchblade at the first kill to the students timed reaction to the freshly dead girl's nearly slo-mo collapse acts in heightened reality. From behind the camera, shots using fast pans, short-but-sweet zooms enhance the action and remove any sensation of reality elevating the film into comic entertainment. Even the sound effects are over done. But that is not to say this film is a joke, please don't mistake my position on it. This is a very brutal film, but it far from a realistic one. The violence is intense, and at some times cruel, but it always feels like fantasy which suites it perfectly.
I wouldn't recommend the film as a strong example of biting commentary, but it is a enormously entertaining film that is very different from anything else, stylistically inspiring and unique, and most importantly it carries a large diverse cast of characters that all work in the grand scheme of things, fitting together just right.
08/18/09