Ten Great Foreign Films Of This Decade

Battle Royale

by Yuki

I first found out about Kinji Fukasaki's Battle Royale when I passed a long line of kids waiting to get into the movie's official store in a nice shopping district of Tokyo.  I immediately dismissed it because of this shameless consumerism and didn't watch it until recently.  When the film was over, I felt overwhelmed and dazed.  It is rare that a teen movie succeeds in giving due homage to the fragile and destructive time in life known as adolescence.  These films tend to be incendiary (the films of Larry Clark, for example) because they dig deeper than we might want to go, and because ultimately, they hold society accountable. Battle Royale is among the most daring of such films, stretching the well-explored themes of youth to their utmost limits while somehow maintaining a tone that is refreshingly simple and sincere.

Battle Royale came at the end of Fukasaku's long and prolific career.  Many of the sixty plus films he directed were dedicated to uncovering the ugliness of human nature, particularly in the world of organized crime.  Before its release in 2000, Japanese parliament nearly banned Battle Royale (though they had only read Koushun Takami's novel it was based on and had yet to see the film itself,) but settled on rating it as NC-15, much to Fukasaku's dismay.  From an American point of view however, this rating may seem tame, as the film disturbing beyond our standards. 

In the opening scene a crowd of camera men and reporters rush towards a landing helicopter.  The door opens to reveal a young girl sitting primly in a blood-spattered school uniform, clutching a rag doll with a dazed grin on her face.  She is the most recent survivor of "Battle Royale," a government sponsored education reform act where one ninth grade class is chosen by lottery, kidnapped, and taken to a deserted island where they are instructed to kill each other off for three days.  Only one survivor gets to go home. By starting the film at the end of a Battle, we get the sinister feeling that this is the way things are, that this has already become just another of the nation's institutions.  It is completely twisted and outrageous, but Fukasaku doesn't offer an explanation as to why this is allowed to happen.  This is not some parallel universe or dystopian future.   The only social context we are given is that unemployment is up to 15% and student have started to boycott classes, but we never see these students in acts of vandalism or delinquency.

The next Battle Royale class wakes up on the island in an abandoned school building with metal tracing collars around their necks (which explode if there is more than one survivor at the end).  After a quick orientation from a former school teacher of theirs (played by Beat Takeshi) the children are randomly given a different weapon of varying deadliness and sent out into the lush island.  For the rest of the film we witness these fresh-faced kids committing sickening acts of brutality upon one another. Violence is something I usually turn away from in film because it is so easily exploited.  So often, it is a logical extension of plot, a catalyst for action, or a necessary evil: someone is killed, someone else must avenge them. In Battle Royale, violence is depicted as a completely irrational reaction (these are children, afterall).  Like soldiers, the students are instructed to kill, but no one pulls the trigger for them. They could have simply refused to kill each other.  But as it is, the killing begins just minutes after the students are set loose. The genius of the film is the way in which this violence is handled.  The kids don't turn bloodthirsty when the battle begins; they have been yanked out of their world too fast to transform.  Instead, it is as though they react just as they would if they were hanging out in the hall or the locker room and a fight breaks out.  But at the moment when fear or rage clouds their reason, they find a weapon in their hand. One scene shows a tight-knit group of girls who have taken refuge in an abandoned light house.  One girl accidentally eats poisoned food meant for someone outside their circle of friends. Blame is thrown around the room, the argument escalates, and suddenly they are pumping each other with lead.  "You're all idiots," says one dying girl, "we could have at least lived till tomorrow."

In a film that tries to portray a group of almost fifty students, Fukasaku must use economical techniques of storytelling in order to flesh out their characters and justify their actions. The student's weapons, for example, which are supposedly assigned to them at random, are revealing of their character.  Mitsuko, the beautiful loner who kills six of her classmates gets a sickle.  Nanahara, our main character who survives purely on the promise he made to his friend (killed by their teacher upon arrival to the island for talking back) to protect his crush, gets a pot lid.  The cool and independent Chigusa, (Chiaki Kuriyama who played Go-Go Yubari in Kill Bill) keeps to herself until she is crossed by an annoying classmate and takes out her switchblade.

Fukasaku also relies on several brief but telling flashbacks of life back on the mainland.  Stylistically they are quite plain: nothing is tinged in a sordid light, and nothing is ironically cheery or repressed either.  The shots are crystal clear, which makes the film that much more disturbing.  Nanahara's flashback shows him coming home from his first day of school to find that his father has hung himself in their tiny one room apartment.  He has left a note for his young son on a roll of toilet paper that reads "GAMBARE!!  GAMBARE!!  GAMBARE!!..."  over and over again, a phrase that I think is translated as "you can do it" but can also means, "work hard, don't give up." At the height of another of Mitsuko's killing sprees, we suddenly see a five year-old Mitsuko come home to her inebriated mother, who is face down on the kitchen table clutching a wad of cash and murmuring, "be strong, not weak like your mother." 

The young cast is incredibly talented, playing their roles with an appropriate mix of horror, innocence, and ferocity.  Beat Takeshi, known as much for his absurd, low brow comedy as he is for directing award-winning films like Hanabi, is perfect as the former teacher of Nanahara's class.  He is the only figure of authority, and plays the part with poignant ambivalence, as though, like the parents, he has long ago drowned in his own incompetence.  At Battle Royale headquarters, he lounges around in a gray jumpsuit, occasionally reading the roster of dead over a PA system that covers the island and offering encouraging words to his students, "it's hard when your friends die but don't give up!" 

In the end, it is a beautifully made film that stands on the side of life despite its incredible brutality.  It does not attempt to rationalize or justify its violence, but it does not need to, since we will never fully comprehend why humans continue to commit atrocities upon one another.  If you can bear to not turn away, this film is well worth your time. 

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