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Seattle's International Film Festival: Part 9

SIFF Day 21 – Royale Rumblings and Movie Overload

By Sara M. Fetters.

Did I Just See That?

The Seattle International Film Festival’s hottest ticket has to have been for Kinji Fukasaku’s Battle Royale, which screened before a packed house at the Cinerama last night.  By far, this hyper violent Japanese opus has the highest, “did I just see that?” quotient of maybe any film I’ve ever seen.

The movie is set in the a near-future Japan where a fascist government has taken control while unemployment has soared past 15% and teenagers across the country are in revolt against the clueless adult world.  To combat the rising violence amongst youth the government institutes a final solution by instating the “Battle Royale” law: one ninth grade class is picked at random and dropped on a deserted island and given a simple and direct lesson plan – “Today, you kill each other off!”

It’s Survivor with hand grenades; Boot Camp with prepubescent children; The Weakest Link where the chosen castoff is beheaded rather than exiled.  Like The Most Dangerous Game or The Running Man, it’s violence as sport and/or entertainment, a high-octane deterrent of bloody carnage used to teach society the folly of violence.  Like the recent Series 7, Battle Royale is the extreme endgame in the current spate of reality television programming.

According to the film’s press kit, director Fukasaku made Royale to exorcise demons from WWII where a full two-thirds of his elementary school classmates were wiped out by American bombs.  It’s an all-out portrayal of a completely desensitized society wrapped up in a cauldron of mindless violence.  Children wear explosive-rigged dog collars, a teacher throws a knife into a student’s forehead, young lovers throw them selves off a cliff, an entire cadre of young girls engage in a kitchen shootout and all of it is staged with nary a wink or a nudge.

It’s the type of film that could never be made in the US considering the current political and social climate.  If a film like O takes over two years to be released, can you imagine the battle cry of the puritanical media watchers if something like this were created?  One can only guess, but it would not surprise me if this film hardly ever sees the light of day in the US.  Maybe at other film festivals or in midnight repertory houses, but the chances of Battle Royale ever entering the art house circuit has got to be worse and none.

Film Overload

I was asked a couple days a go by a regular festival ticket holder how I can handle seeing so many films (I’m nearing 60) in such a short amount of time.  In her mind, she was positive that so many movies would start running into each other after a while, that she would get to be so worn out she’d never want to go to another film.

Well, I don’t know about that.  I love going to the movies too much to even remotely ponder not seeing another.  All the same, I have to admit that days of seeing four or five films can get a bit trying, especially if you sit in the same theater all day.  I’ve found that if I move around from venue to venue I seem to stay somewhat invigorated, but if I sit in the same seat for six, eight or even ten hours at one time I get beyond exhausted.

In the past, I’ve prided myself on the fact I’ve never walked out of or fallen asleep in a film.  Even would they’ve been bloody awful, I tend to try and give them benefit of the doubt of a complete viewing.  My opinion – you can’t really comment fully on a movie unless you have sat through the entire thing.  It’s a great sentiment, I’m told, but it has been fully tested during SIFF.  Hardest thing I’ve had to do – sit through two terrible hours of a film after watching three or four other movies in the same day.

All the same, covering a film festival of this size can be a great deal of fun.  For every piece of garbage there have been three or four other movies that have made my heart race and pulse pound.  Many of the best films I’ve seen at SIFF the festival is the only venue to view them in all their glory, most without US distributors or home video agreements.  The chance that they’ll never resurface in this country again is always prevalent, so the thought I could next be seeing a soon-to-be-lost masterpiece is always in the back of my mind.

When all is said and down, I think I’m going to top out at 70 films that I’ve been able to take in during this festival.  I’m exhausted, that’s for sure, but I wouldn’t have missed any of those 70 for anything.  Even the ones I’ve hated will hold a special place in my heart, but hopefully that pain will drift away – at least by next year’s festival.

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