Amateur Recommendation Hour: Battle Royale

Today’s recommendation is a film that makes The Hunger Games look clunky, boring, and unimaginative by comparison. If you are a fan of the former and have let this classic slip through your grasp then consider this your reminder that you should definitely not delay any further if you can help it.

Battle Royale (2000), directed by Kinji Fukasaku (based on the novel by Koushun Takami) is about a group of junior high-school students that are forced to fight to the death by the Japanese government. It wastes absolutely no time getting into the meat of its plot. No exhaustive exposition dump and enough explanation with a combination of dialogue and through imagery to ground the world and plot without feeling like you’ve been word vomited to. Mixing teenage melodrama, interpersonal conflicts and relationships you'd find in a high school setting with a fight-to-the-death arena in which there is no escape is mad-genius on the part of Takami that I admire to no end. A risk that has paid dividends in more ways than one all these years later.

It is one of the most influential works in 21st century film and more broadly global pop culture. Inspiring films, books, an entire genre of video games and many more. Its importance in modern art and media cannot be understated. To say it is merely a fascinating origin of a genre does not do it justice. 

Personally it doesn't bother me that it has effectively had a hand in creating so much media. The Beatles revolutionized music, Pablo Picasso revolutionized abstract art, and Shakespeares influences transcend that of literature and theatre. There will always be a creator or group of creators that change the landscape of what we know possible. We should welcome innovation and experiments in the creative space with open arms rather than stick to a rigid formula of how to create for the rest of time.

My interpretations of this work are that it is a criticism of totalitarianism, a commentary on the generational divide between adults and children, and the importance of connection in the most unforgiving of circumstances. The way in which it presents its themes are not for the faint of heart. Quite literally taking absolutely no prisoners. 

If you do not handle blood and gore well then this might be a difficult watch. For everyone else to say that this landmark moment in arts and entertainment (I'm laying it on a little thick aren't I?) is worth experiencing would go without saying. So naturally I just wrote six paragraph, page-long piece about why you should.