The Happiness of the Katakuris (2001) Reviews

It is a sad fact that many people who love Takashi Miike films love the director not for his unique insight, his playful narratives, his genre busting, or his quirky sense of humour but for the visceral stomp that Miike has shown himself to be more than capable of providing.

I say this is a sad fact as in many ways one of the finest talents to have emerged from Japan is often times viewed as car crash movie making. His films seen as macabre theatres of blood, gore and general grossness. This is a real shame, as there are very few Miike films that don’t have something to say beyond the blood, semen and eviscerated guts.

I have seen roughly a quarter of Miike’s 50+ catalogue of films. And while a few films fit the criteria for the gore hounds out there, he is often at his best when he is sans the shock. Films like The Bird People in China, a startlingly poignant almost Ghibli like movie, Graveyard of Honor and the Happiness of the Katakuri’s show that he is a filmmaker who does not have to always rely on viscera.

The Happiness of the Katakuris in many ways has been his best received film over in Europe. Picking up plaudits that his other films missed out on due to their grotesque nature. It is easy to see why this film got so much attention. When you watch an average Miike film it is like watching a hyperactive David Lynch movie, when he is on form he is transcendental.

Happiness of the Katakuris is actually a remake of a fairly recent Korean film. The original was a dour, painfully unfunny satire about a family who set up a remote guesthouse and find that none of their guest’s can last the night. Faced with a growing number of corpses the family begin burying them out in the surrounding wasteland.

Happiness of the Katakuris follows this same basic story structure but charges the rather dull narrative with flashes of intense brilliance. While that may sound hyperbolic there is no denying that a film which starts with a little vignette about a goblin emerging from a bowl of soup, ripping out a girl’s tonsils, flying off and getting eaten by a crow which itself is mutilated by a steel clawed bear is playing by a whole new rule book.

In fact, while the original Korean movie was a dull black comedy the Happiness of the Katakuris can be only really described as a 1940s style musical, mixed with some hilarious black comedy and moments of absurdist fantasy that are guaranteed to get a least a chuckle. Someone once described this movie to me as a musical about how crappy musicals are, in many ways they are right.

The song and dance numbers are done with a wonderful sense of knowing camp. The dance moves are melodramatic, the singing ranges from gut wrenchingly awful to about karaoke standard, and the musical scores are almost always hilarious overdone. Despite this their seems to be a genuine fondness for the old musicals and while this film shamelessly rips on them you can tell a lot of care and attention has gone into the production.

There is no denying the absurdist charm of the movie especially when faced with characters like Richard Sagawa, played by controversial punk rocker Kiyoshiro Imawano, a half-British half-Japanese member of the US Air Force (no make that the Royal Navy) who is the secret lovechild of Queen Elizabeth’s younger half sister and whom regularly flies missions over Iraq. Sagawa is the main romantic interest for Shizoue Katakuri and in his limited screen time he directs a grand love song, flies into the air, gets poisoned, hit over the head, dropped off a cliff and much more.

The film is just jam packed with a cheeky exuberance which makes it both hard to take seriously and also unforgettable. The cast of characters is perfect from the determined husband and wife duo who lead the house, to the crotchety old granddad who steals every scene and musical number he appears in. Add to that a menageries of guests that include a singing suicide victim, a peppy schoolgirl and her gigantic sumo boyfriend, and a family who seem doomed from the moment they enter and it is almost impossible to get bored throughout the proceedings.

Takashi Miike was hired to direct Happiness Of The Katakuris by Shochiku Studios as their annual feel-good New Year's family film. Just as would be expected from the king of subversive cinema he released the film he wanted to release complete with talk of cutting up bodies, girls suffocated under their heavyweight lovers, sumos dropped out of windows, granddad burying a style live guest, the rabbit in the moon made to mount another, and the father of the piece floating across the screen dressed in full Von Trapp gear as his wife sings the film’s signature karaoke song. In the end Happiness of the Katakuris despite all the death, deceit, premature burials and zombie dance numbers is actually a really bright positive movie. It really is the feel good movie that Miike was hired to direct, just done in his own style.

The Happiness of the Katakuris might best be described as Agatha Christie meets Beetlejuice, and then throw in the Sound of Music. If that sounds like it probably wouldn't work, it sorta doesn't. The musical numbers tend to be very surreal and luckily short. And although there were a few good laughs, and more chuckles, I was glad when the two hour long movie was over. The locations are excellent in this movie, the irony good, and the characters likable. And overall it might have been a much better movie if they had cut it down more, and the pace had been quicker. And the end had me puzzled, but relieved the whole thing was over. However, I might remember it for a long time.