Humanity showed by blood
Comment on the movie Battle Royale
BR（Battle Royale）is an unprecedented originality, cause no one could think out such a cruel story and let a group of teenagers to act it. In fact, what does BR want to show is that, as simple as those teenagers’ thought, something about humanity. But this time it is blood that is used to show.
No many reasons as well as words, just as teachers use to throw a piece of chalk onto a noisy student’s head, but here, the piece of chalk changed into a knife. The knife finished a first child’s life and declared clearly that BR had started. Perhaps it was too fast to make the audience as well as the students in the movie understand the fact of the game at once, so the second victim appeared soon. The reason why he should die was similar to the earlier one, the teacher didn’t like them, but it was more dramatic: when he knew he would die of the bomb in the digital necklace, he tried to call help, but no one wanted to help. They, who always loved playing with him in the past days, pulled him away with scare. At last, in front of the hesitation of his best friend, the necklace bombed. Everywhere spilled blood witnessed one thing: everyone is frightened of death and before death, most people could only think of themselves.
The cold face of the teacher mirrored the cruelty of this world which seemed to be peaceful. According to the BR rule, every student could get some food, a map, a compass, and a piece of weapon. What is funny that someone could get a real weapon such as a gun, but someone could only get a paper fan. But it is the truth, the reality of our world, because there’s hardly fair in our society. Someone have the ability to win while someone even doesn’t have strength to protect himself. But the BR world seemed to be more cruel and ridiculous: every student must try to kill others in 3 days until there’s only one survivor, if not, all would die.
Killing began at the dark night. A fat boy who was too frightened to keep his mind clear shot a powerless girl. However powerless the girl was, she was still a threaten, a life threaten, to that fat boy. When the fat boy was ready to shot again to another boy, he fell accidentally and it made chance to the other boy to shoot him. The fat one died. It’s better to say that the fat boy was killed by himself, for the self-preservation belongs to all kinds of animals.
Then the speed became fast, a group of students captured a hooligan which had been forced to quit school. The boy was so unlucky that he only got a paper fan as his weapon. But his eyes were full of murderous look and he seized a gun from one then killed all the people at present without hesitation. What is sad is that the boy wanted to join the game himself just because he felt this game was exiting. Maybe to a zero man, it is very easy to gamble with his life. But to that group, they’d like to waste their time to show off about their luck which made them die finally.
Of course there was someone who chose to give up: two lovers who didn’t want to kill anyone and be killed by anyone, so they turned to suicide.
The story went on.
A girl who didn’t want to “just stay and wait to be killed” picked up a butcher knife and killed whoever she met. She was just struggling. Maybe she should get some mercy when she were to die. She was shot a lot but she tried to stand up again and again, she didn’t want to die, she wanted to use her last energy to fight, to resist, she never thought she liked killing but she had to. So is the reality, many people just want to survive, so they have to survive on other’s body.
But there were also someone who didn’t be affected by the sudden change. A girl runner who still keep the habit to practice running every morning seemed to live in her own world. Then came a bad boy(I’m sorry that I could remember their names)who still had the mood to think about that girl runner and a boy who was loved secretly by the girl runner as well. In their mind, they nearly forgot that they were on a death island and what they cared about was love. Teenager’s love maybe is not so important, especially when they were going to die. So the girl runner killed the bad boy by self-protection but was hurt another one. What’s lucky is that she could die beside the boy she loved and she used her last breath to tell him the true thought hidden in her heart for a long time. The boy who actually loved another girl got a GPRS device, he found out the girl he loved but was shot by her scare. The boy didn’t blamed, his last sentence was, go quickly, someone is coming! It’s a pity that the coming one was no one but boy who loved killing. The love game ended. Compared with death, the trouble of love or any other little thing of our world is far more beautiful then anything, isn’t it?
The saddest death should belong to some girl who hid in a light tower. They were just like a family, they were kind to each other, they didn’t know how to survive, their only wish was to die in the last minute together. But all is ruined by a feeling called hate. One of the girls witnessed that the boy(Nanahara) saved by another killed her boyfriend by mistake, so what she wanted to do was to kill Nanahara for her boyfriend. She was so weak and that’s the only chance she could do revenge. She put poison into his food but the food was eaten by another girl mistakenly. She was too scared to tell the truth while other girls were suspecting each other and shooting. As a punishment, they were all gone. And she jump from the light tower with guilt. Nanahara was left too many pain and misunderstanding.
There were also some students who had tried to fight against the fate.3 boys hidden in a empty factory were always trying to break the rule. One of them was good at computer and he tried thousands of times to damage the system of the BR office and the other two, made some bomb to bomb the office. They never gave up until the Azrael came. Life is unfair, they nearly succeeded, but it is life, just life. But one thing good was that that killer’s eyes, the one full of murderous look were hurt by their bomb.
So many people died and how about our main actor Nanahara? He could not die. In fact it didn’t matter who was the main actor/ress because everyone’s death was showing a part of our world’s reality which is naked and blooded. Nanahara, he was the bridge of those facts and a spectator, a accepter. He had to accept the truth that his mother abandoned him, he had to witness his father’s suicide and had to trust no adult. What weapon he got was a pan top, which was not as weak as a paper fan but could not hurt anyone as well. Maybe Nanahara was lucky enough, many girls in his class liked him(so he was saved by the girls in the light tower), and the winner of the game 3 years ago seemed to care about him. However he was just a normal person as many of us, I mean us, live with both luck and unluck but still alive. So was the girl who was protected by Nanahara, normal girl.
BR is bloody, every blood in it show a kind of humanity. It’s not far from us, it’s inside us. We could make a simple story to tell it but it is not powerful. So born the BR, it really made us think deeply.
In the final scene, the teacher allured Nanahara to shoot him with a water gun, and he replied a phone call comically. The phone call was from his family, they were blaming him for not going home often. He replied, I will never come again then died. And the winner of the game 3 years ago, he save Nanahara and the girl, died with smile because he finally understood why his girlfriend choose to die in the last minute 3 years ago. The last two death were different from all before, they were not bloody, they were quite normal as in many other films.
And as the good-bye scene, there’re two dreams made by Nanahara and the girl. They were very peaceful with foggy sight. Maybe the fog could wash the blood before.
