Battle Royale (2000)

Fukasaku Kinji

Japan

114 min (118 in the uncut European version), Japanese with English subtitles

This film is highly recommended.

In the near future, Japan is on the verge of collapse. Unemployment is at 15%, and rebellious youths stage protests that throw the state into further chaos. In retaliation, the conservative regime passes the Millennium Reform School Act (Battle Royale, or BR Act) under whose provisions a class of ninth graders is randomly selected every year, transported to a remote island, and given three days to survive. It is no walk in the park.

The rules are simple:

You have three days
You can use any means at your disposal to kill others
If more than one person survives at the end of the three days, everybody dies

In short, only one person can walk away from the sick Darwinian game.

This years' pick is Class B, another bunch of typical teenagers, with all their cruelty, petty jealousies, friendship, and loves. Among them are Shuya (Fujiwara Tatsuya) and the girl whom he has a crush on, Noriko (Maeda Aki). As the students recover from the drug-induced sleep, they find themselves in a room, with their former teacher Kitano (Beat Takeshi) flanked by menacing soldiers. The students are given no time to ponder their fate. After a short and brutal hands-on introduction, they are dispatched, one by one, into the darkness, each getting a small survival kit and some kind of "weapon". Among the classmates are two mysterious older boys, Kawada (Yamamoto Taro) and Kiriyama (Ando Masanobu), whose presence is unexplained, but who seem to have an edge over the rest of the class.

And so the game begins. The social fabric of this micro society unravels surprisingly fast, when fear drives the first killings. Even while Shuya and Noriko try to meet outside, a fellow classmate, who has already murdered one of the girls, tries to kill them too. Very quickly friendships disintegrate in a whirl of paranoia and mistrust. Whom do you trust under these circumstances?

Yet, not everything is pre-determined. Some try to stop the killing and call for peace to figure a way out for everyone. They perish even as they make their pleas for peace. Others, especially boys and girls who are in love with each other, are unable to accept the rules of the game and commit suicide by hanging together or leaping off the cliffs into the sea. Yet others use this opportunity to settle personal grudges, a warped retribution scheme that they would never have dared to contemplate outside the game. Some, like Kiriyama, are bent on destruction, obviously enjoying the opportunity to do things one can never do in normal societies. Yet others form alliances, either trying to strike at the command center and disable to soldiers who are enforcing the rules, or just by sticking together until the end, and then come what may.

Trust is a commodity desperately needed but in scarce supply. Still, Shuya and Noriko commit to each other, with Shuya pledging to protect her until the end (and presumably to kill himself once only the two of them survive). But this may have been Kawada's purpose in the previous BR, although, as he says, once only two remain things change yet again. (Or did they? It seems that in his case his girlfriend simply preempted him by forcing him to kill her instead.)

As I was watching the rather bloody proceedings (Fukasaku is never one to skimp on violence, and the one in this film is extremely well-done), I kept wondering what I would do in a situation like this. One is tempted to think that he would not be among the ones hacking their former friends with a hatchet, zapping them with electric guns, or riddling them with lead. Yet, in the end, the rules are astonishingly and perversely simple: There can be only one. I like to believe that I, like Shuya, would find a worthy cause and help a loved one survive... but who's to say how strong our moral constitution is until it is severely strained.

For all its unstinting brutality, Battle Royale either chickens out at the end, or provides a glimmer of hope, depending on how one wants to interpret the conclusion. The message is plain for all to see, the ones to survive were the ones who trusted each other without fail, but who were ready to protect themselves from marauding "friends". Shuya tries to apply this philosophy to everyone he meets, but only once does he succeed.

One very good scene is where several girls shelter him only to kill each other in a frenzy induced by suspicion and more fear. As the last one dies, she sighs, "Stupid. We could all have survived together." Mistakes are deadly, but not because the boys and girls are evil but because of the zero-sum nature of the game and the incentives each has if s/he wants to survive.

This has got to be another important message to take from the film. People need not be evil to do evil things. Rather, the situation is such where you do not know whether you can trust the other or preempt them. This is what Schelling called the "dynamics of mutual alarm" and it has to do with the potentially explosive (and quite unfortunate) results that small doubts about the intentions of the other coupled with advantages of preemptive action can produce. (Note that I am not playing here the same tune many extreme liberals do when they claim that society must carry the responsibility for its criminals.) In such a situation, there can be only two ways out: either you fully trust someone and put your life in his/her hands (this is what Noriko and Shuya do with each other and with Kawada). Or you establish a common goal which may undo the game and let more than one person survive (this is what the hacker/bomber group tried to do).

Or... you can be on your own and ensure your survival in the primitive Darwinian fashion. Remarkably, Fukasaku wants to say that this will not work. People who find something beyond themselves are worthy of survival. The otherwise fine conclusion is marred by the simple fact that had it not been for Kitano, the plan would not have worked. And why did Kitano do what he did? His obvious attraction for Noriko could not have been the whole story.

My biggest complaint has to do with Beat Takeshi, who (at least in this film) is just plain bad. His acting is stiff and the script does not help any by making him very robot-like and with no clear sense of purpose. The direction is assured and very good, the bloodbath scenes are a sight to see, as are the gentler and very touching moments. The film's rhythm is relentless, the tempo picks up after every kill, as the ruthless countdown to 1 reminds us (and the students) constantly how close they are to the point of ultimate decisions. No wonder the seemingly stable alliances disintegrate the lower the count drops. Postponing a serious decision only ensures that the one that is made in the end in a hurry will be so much worse.

Curiously, the ninth graders reminded me a bit of my own experience in school. When I went to school in the 1980s in Bulgaria, education was compulsory until the eleventh grade and was wholly subsidized by the government. However, after the seventh grade you could apply to one of the few prestigious schools, either the English Language School (or any of the German/French ones), the Mathematics School, and the Natural Science School. Entrance to these was through examinations in Mathematics and Literature, for which the competition was nationwide and fierce because each school only admitted a very small number of students. It was generally impossible to succeed on these exams without an arduous year-long preparation with private tutors in addition to regular seventh grade studies. Getting into one of these schools was almost a necessary prerequisite for entering the University upon graduation.

I went through this and graduated from the English Language School five years later. But the interesting experience lay with what I was thinking during the exam when a friend of mine asked for help (cheating was, of course, not unheard of), and how the resulting stratification quickly separated one from former schoolmates. I cannot say that I wish to recall much of that, or that I cherish these memories fondly. However, the ultimate reward --- the ability to proudly wear the uniform and the emblem of the ELS --- outweighed many of the otherwise debilitating disadvantages from losing an entire social circle I had belonged to. In many ways, the friendships formed at the ELS survive to this day, in no small measure because they were forged when all of us were desperately grappling for new relationships amid the ruins of our old ones. We all "survived" with the firm belief that we were better than the ones who "failed".

December 10, 2002