"我只是不想坐以待斃" - 大逃殺

分類：jpop
2007/09/29 12:03
從我的舊部落格轉貼來的, 因為我花了蠻多時間寫這篇, 所以一直不想delete掉想必大家都聽過大逃殺吧? 2001(特別版) 深作欣二 藤遠龍也 北野武 前田亞季 安藤政信 柴崎幸 R-15 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
PrefaceIn the beginning of this century, Japan is now in a chaotic state. The rate of unemployment rapidly rises, 15% of all the students boycotted school. Teen violence is more frequent than ever thus causing the deaths for numerous teachers. The adults lost confidence in themselves and in their country. In order to retrieve their dignity, they have successfully passed on a brutal law - The Millenium Educational Reform Act aka the BR law. The BR law commissioners will choose a graduating grade 9 class from a middle school each year in Japan to play a game in which every student must "battle" against each other for survival in three days. If there are more than one student living on the third day, every one of them will be executed.

This may look gory anomalous, yet if the audiences carefully analyze this film, they are able to realize how this masterpiece depics friendship, morality, fear, courage, love, hatrad, and the meaning, the value of life. In two hours, Kinji Fukasaku fully presented humans' ugliness and beauty.
All the students used different methods to play this death game. Some tried to escape the reality by commiting suiside, some killed their best friends just to survive, some killed to protect themselves, some tried to change the rules to this game, some waited to see if miracles might turn out, some wanted to enjoy their last three days of their lives, some wanted to know the meaning of their friends' last smile, and some registered to play this game just for fun and excitement.
In this game the kids will be given different weapons randomly which they cannot choose from. These weapons are great metaphors which can be saw as a person's talents, economic status, and the environment he/she lives in. One important theme that is presented by battle royale is how a person's destiny isn't decided upon which weapon he/she gets, or whether he/she's smart or rich. Ando-san started with the weakest weapon -- a paper fan in the beginning of the game. Somehow he still manage to kill a number of his classmates, collected all their weapons and ended up being the most powerful one. A student (i forgot his name) got a machine gun, started off as the undefeatable genius; but because of his carelessness, he lost everything, including his life.
Recall that everyone has different ways in playing Battle Royale, we cannot actually tell who's right and who's wrong; after all, there is no right or wrong in this game. Under the threat of death, any of their actions are carried out for the sake of their survivals. Kou Shibasaki (Mitsuko Souma) may have been a despicable and brutal killer, but she said it herself "I just don't want to wait for my death helplessly". The students in Battle Royale are standing on the boarderline of death, they're struggling all the way through. Each of them are helpless in different ways. As we try to bring ourselves into the film, the students struggles could be understood.
Nanahara and Nakagawa aren't so noble after all. They seemed to be so decent and kind for they didn't tried to kill anyone YET, without their classmates' mad massacres they wouldn't be able to live through this game. They basically had the others to bear the sin for "murder" while they tried to evade the game. Ironically, the powerful ones-- Kou Shibasaki (Mitsuko) and Ando-san (Kazuo) all died to become the loser. This IS a movie, there are protagonists and villians. Kou and Ando-san's powerfulness must be replaced with the conception that "antangonists must lose". However in reality that is not the case; people like Nanahara and Nakagawa cannot survive at all.
Battle Royale wouldn't just occur on isolated islands, it can occur at anywhere, including the urban cities we live in. Truely, in our lives people may not encounter the escapings and killings like in the flim.The film uses brutal massacres to emphasize the fierce and intense competition within the society for how people must compete with each other to gain approvals. People will choose either a moral or evil road to face their lives. This movie isn't trying to make us view the massive bloody scenes, but to discover the human nature hidden behind these students' actions.

There were two main antagonists in Battle Royale were Shibasaki-chan (Mitsuko Souma) and Ando-san (Kazuo Kiriyama). They were cruel killers and were their classmates' biggest threat. But what exactly lead to their ruthless behaviors? We don't have to care about Ando-san because he WAS born a sociopath with the mind of a genius and the inability to feel emotion. Kou Shibasaki's actions, on the other hand, should be sympathized. The movie did not explain about her childhood very well, but the novel did:
She was raped several times when she was a child and was forced to sell her body for her mother's gain. After she told her teacher about her misfortunate, instead of getting the help she needed, Mitsuko got raped once more. Her best friend witnessed the whole thing and spread rumours around the school. When she accidently killed her mother (thought to be innocent because she cleaned up the scene to make it look like a robbery) she went on to live with her relatives where she was harassed by their child and molested by the child's father. Thus, the young girl became a hollow shell, a cruel person who didn't want to have anything else taken away from her again or to lose again; she could not handle honest and truthful relationships with anyone else nor could she afford to be compassionate towards others.

Does that mean Kou, like Ando-san didn't have the ability to feel emotion? Not exactly. Noticed in the film, Kou was very nervous when her class's basketball team was about to score, and "sort of" smiled when the team won. Kou had to hide her feelings, she must remain cheerless in order to protect herself from anymore harm. If you have the Korean or Japanese version, you will see that Kou killed two more guys (Takiguchi and Hatagami) in the nudity part. She did not just "simply" kill them. Hatagami and Takiguchi captured her but did not kill her because Takiguchi sympathized Kou for her miserable childhood (Note. Kou liked Takiguchi). During their night together, Hatagami tried to rape Kou while Takiguchi was sleeping.
Kou defended herself by stabbing Hatagami with her Sickle. Awakened by the fight, Takiguchi was told by Hatagami that Kou was going to kill him. Hatagami then tried to shoot Kou but failed because Takiguchi blocked the bullets to protect Kou. After Kou killed Hatagami (Obviously she will destroy him badly for killing her love) she kissed Takiguchi (who was still alive) and shot him three more times to put him out of his misery. Throughout the story, Takiguchi was the only person who Kou showed compassion for and whose death upsets her.

Let's go back to the beginning, to why the BR law was distributed. The adults thought that "these kids are a menace", creating this law is to "make you to become useful adults". But if we go back earlier, we find that these kids were to live, learn, and raised in a society that the adults have plotted for them. Aren't the adults, the ones who "created" them, the people who are responsible for their disordered behaviours? Why have these children pay for their failture?

It is sad to see how these students were still friends before they were thrown onto the remote island; yet as the game began, they were aware of to compete to battle against each other. From the educated students worn in uniforms, they slowly degenerated into hopeless savages who have nothing else except for the desire to survive.

This work shoudln't be confused with Golding's The Lord of the Flies; they are very different actually. The Lord of the Flies is actually telling us how people are most likely to display their ugliness when they are grouped together (at least that's what I think the theme was). On the other hand Battle Royale is reflecting how people in the society choose ways to play their life game, to compete with each other.
This film was critisized by many, the director Kinji Fukasaku made the following defence: "Teenagers are not kids anymore, they have their own point of views, we cannot use "age" as an excuse to limit their perspective."
The actress who played Mitsuko Souma, Shibasaki-san said "Battle Royale isn't trying to present an idea of murder, but a thought of "how to survive through difficulties."