BATTLE ROYALE Explained: The Masterpiece Behind The Hunger Games

Here is a film whose existence is truly hard to overlook. However, before I embarked on a journey through this degenerated world, I had some preconceptions that led me to expect something entirely different from what I received. Tarantino’s admiration for this movie and the plot description would suggest a bloody and humorous spectacle meant to entertain the viewer. Battle Royale.

Here, we move to the near future, where the world is on the brink of moral collapse. Kids in school either avoid studying, torment their peers, or, while running, stab a teacher leaving the classroom. Violence is on the rise, and in order to prepare future generations for it and give them a lesson, the “BR” project – Battle Royale – is brought to life. It involves randomly selecting one class each year and throwing them into a world of a particularly cruel game. This time, during a school trip, the kids are put to sleep and wake up in a dirty room, where soon, led by their teacher – Kitano, the military enters. The students have strange collars around their necks and learn that within three days they must kill each other. Only one person may return home, and if more than one unclaimed winner remains, the collars will explode, tearing their throats apart. The unwilling participants are shocked, but those who resist are immediately excluded from the game. The corpses of their classmates convince others that the only chance of survival is killing their friends. And so, each receives equipment, the type of which depends on luck – one might get an axe, a gun… or a pair of binoculars…

What is worth noting here is the equipment the participants receive. It is so varied that it can either be seen as a poor joke or indicate that if they joined forces and combined their skills, everyone could survive. Of course, the attempt to call for cooperation ends tragically, as a desire to rely on oneself is born. Trusting others is so fragile that the slightest suspicion and sense of danger leads to bloodshed… this corresponds with another trait of human nature – that violence brings pleasure. One of the characters is even driven by it, seeing nothing wrong in killing. There is also one boy who volunteered for the project… The people selected for the game are those who create violence, fitting perfectly into this devastated world. Of course, the “innocent” also become victims, but only on the battlefield does it become clear who these people really are. Not everyone has moral objections to murder; those who do not always know how to choose anything other than suicide.

The kids don’t want to fight, but every decision they make results in death. How can one assess the value of life when constantly under fire or having a high chance of ending up with an axe in their head? The natural defense seems to be attack. They then get drawn into the game. But what is this game supposed to teach them? Will returning as a winner make them adapted to the adult world? Will they suddenly begin to appreciate what was taken from others? The first scene, showing the previous winner, depicts a bloodied girl clutching a teddy bear and smiling demonically. One might doubt if this is truly someone who has just become worthy of life. Victory achieved in this way cannot ensure this, which is why the two main characters – Nanahara and Noriko – seek another solution than stabbing their classmates in the back or jumping into the sea.

The film, it seems, does not offer much opportunity to delve into psychology, yet the flashbacks make the fate of the chosen characters something we cannot remain indifferent to. We receive a significant amount of information about each character. Four of them stand out: Nanahara (Tatsuya Fujiwara), Noriko (Aki Maeda), Kawada (Taro Yamamoto), and Kitano. Nanahara lost his parents; he once came home to find his father hanging, with farewell words written on a roll of toilet paper for his son. The death of his father and the farewell note continually haunt the boy. During the Battle Royale game, he sets as his goal the care of Noriko. She, in turn, is a pretty, shy girl, unable to trust anyone. She fears people, as she was the subject of crude jokes from her female classmates. The situation in which they all find themselves forces her to hide under the wings of her classmate. She also gains a strange sympathy from Kitano. He, however, is a man profoundly lonely, running the game, but emotionally, it seems, he is not interested in it. The most mysterious character is Kawada. He is driven by revenge, as well as a desire to get an answer to a certain troubling question…

The power of words is also interestingly depicted. By talking, one can reach a compromise, but often, participants in the bloody game refuse to listen, panic, and resort to the argument of using weapons. Notably, the main antagonist, Masanobu (Kazuo Kiriyama), who signed up to participate in the brutal game, does not say a single word throughout. For him, everything is simple – one must kill others to survive. Nothing connects him to them, they are strangers to him. While friends kill each other out of fear, he, like a terminator, roams the island, shooting at everything that moves.

This work… moved me, above all. The individual scenes don’t flaunt varied cruelty; we get used to death in a moment, just as we do to breathing. It becomes a natural backdrop, and the emphasis shifts in a completely different direction. It is a story about trust, while also asking about the value of life. It shows that even the strongest bonds of friendship or love completely disintegrate when survival is at stake. It is said that man exists for others, yet when he wins life for someone else and, in the end, must also sacrifice his own so that a loved one can survive… it is no longer so simple. It is easy to do something for someone – but at the expense of others, not yourself. Of course, this is one side of the relationship between people, because the truth is that if everything were so pessimistic, it would make no sense. And some fight precisely for meaning, for survival, while not giving in to this game. The winners are rewarded, in a very strange way, no longer being ordinary kids. They are able to preserve their innocence in order to enter the world of adults, to which they were adapted on that island…

The film ultimately drew me in. At times, it might amuse, many scenes are exaggerated, yet it genuinely stimulates empathy and allows one to easily move into that world. The actors did well, and interestingly, none of the kids were replaced by stunt doubles. The music was accurately chosen, complementing the various moments. Also, the idea for the plot is intriguing, although with similar themes, the viewer had the chance to encounter them, for example, in adaptations of Lord of the Flies (or recently The Hunger Games for that matter). While there, it was shown how primal instincts emerge among children, how animal nature gradually develops, here, the more fundamental question seems to be not about the demons within humans, but about the value of life. How can it be saved and become truly worthy of it…