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I've seen Battle Royale three times now. Once back in 2002 when the film was first released on DVD in this country. I was just getting into Asian cinema at the time, graduating from anime onto the films of John Woo and Takeshi Miike, and so was devouring everything asian I could find. I already knew a ton about Battle Royale when I finally was able to rent it on DVD, I knew that it was viewed as a new video nasty, a film of shocking, unremitting, violence and so I went in expecting some transgressive horror and because I was a 16 year old fuckhead found myself a little underwhelmed by the violence, but enraptured by the overall style of the thing. The humour, the tone, the music, the great, almost deadpan, performance by Takeshi Kitano all combined to create a film I was mesmorised by. It's a film with a deserved cult following, but I kind of loved the technical side of thing but never properly connected with it.
The second time was a HK import of the Director's Cut, which was a mistake and kind of soured me on the film in general.
The third time was tonight, on Blu-Ray (a lavishly put together thing by Arrow Productions, it's actually kind of insane how much care and thought went into their Limited Edition) and the film worked for me in a completely different way. The spectacle and technical skill of the film was still there, and looked stunning on Blu, but I got the horror of the film this time, because I'm not a sociopathic 16 year old fuckhead. Whilst the film is blackly, blacker than a moonless night, comic there's a level of pathos and horror in the brutality that I never really picked up on before.
Battle Royale kind of works as a far more effective horror movie than I ever imagined, just little things like the reveal of the 'nice' teacher and the various shots of kid corpses is done with the kind of twisted aplomb that really gets under the skin. There's a passivity at times in the film, a detached way of filming which kind of grounds the more fantastical elements of the film and makes the kids deaths really horrifying. I've often wanted to read the original novel, because there a ton of allusions to a fictional alternative history in this film that are more fleshed out in the book and I'm fascinated by that sort of thing.
One of the things I find really interesting about the film is how Fukasaku has obvious sympathy for the kids, but also isn't afraid to use them as a commentary on society at large. It's easy to see the island, and it's murderous inhabitants, as a microcosm of society in general. As such whilst the kids are in a terrible situation they're kind of viewed impassively and judged by their actions, rather than their circumstances. It's why I think it's interesting that the two survivors are the two kids who refused to take part in the game. That impassiveness is also there in the way the action sequences are staged with the music swelling, and the score is the one thing I adored this time, and the kids actually being shown to be fairly competent through their choreography kind of ties into them being defined by action rather than intent.
Random piece of minutae: Because Chiaki Kuriyama carved herself out a career, post Battle Royale, as a general psycho in movies I kind of mixed up her character and the character of Mitsuko in my memory. As such I was kind of surprised when Kuriyama DIDN'T turn out to the sickle wielding maniac and instead was kind of a bitplayer.
10/10
