Greatful Dead (2013): Twisted Amelie turned Gallows Battle Royale (Review)

Emotional neglect is a significant problem in Asia, proven how suicide has inflated to epidemic levels on more than one occasion. With cinema reflecting the world we live it, emotional neglect, isolation and despair have gone on to become prevalent subtexts and thematic discourse within much of Asian cinema. So Yong Kim broached the issue with severity in the serene Treeless Mountain, Third Windows filmography regularly visits emotional strife using it as a jumping-off point with Sion Sono’s bewildering Love Exposure and Himizu, being just two of many, and now, the label’s first release of 2015 with Greatful Dead.

Nami (Kumi Takiuchi) has an awful childhood, with a Mother dedicating all her time and affection to needy children on the other side of the world and a father who dotes on his wife, ignoring all else. The very same mother abandons her family to be with these children in need leaving Nami and her older sister with a void in their lives, a hole that the young Nami tries to fill by violently assaulting her fellow students and splurging on the home shopping network to get the attention of her Father. With both strategies failing, all she has is the neglect of home life. Eventually, her older Sister moves away from the family home and later still her father commits suicide, leaving Nami alone with her inherited money.

Years pass by and Nami has become the apotheosis of loneliness, spending her days being served by her staff and stalking the Tokyo cityscape for people she has labelled solitarians – people who have gone crazy in their loneliness. Nami gleefully surveys the city with her agenda unswervingly intact, even her sister who “selfishly” abandoned her in the past attempting to re-establish a connection or her favourite solitarians turning up dead don’t faze her addiction. Even though Nami is stalking the down and outers, she still maintains a degree of cute. Her body language is open, often skipping with a beaming smile of satisfaction constantly tattooed across her face. Takiuchi’s rich characterisation carries the film past the point of good taste.

While it does stagnate a little in the middle, it does have a secondary arc ready to inject life and the instigator of this adrenaline boost is Kim Kkobbi. Kkobbi plays Christian volunteer Soo-Young who visits the elderly, reading them passages from the Bible as part of a community outreach programme. Kkobbi visits Nami’s favourite Solitarian, Sanjuro (Takashi Sasano), turning him from the dour old man who drove his family away into an altogether more accepting person, ending his status as a Solitarian. This change prompts a change in Nami, no longer is she the twistedly cute Amelie parallel. Her morbid concept of ownership and her own background collide to awaken violence in Nami that sees Greatful Dead refocus from whatever nightmarish black comedy it was to this point and refocus on the home invasion.

If that extended synopsis didn’t paint a vivid enough picture, Greatful Dead escalates like few others. Intensifying from a girl ‘people-watching’ in a public park with an infrequent spattering of forced entry to a violent woman battling to the death with Tokyo’s most insane vagrant by her side. As a by-product of this battle, the film dips its toe into sexual violence, the context of which is a little difficult to swallow. Evolving from a super unconventional whimsy to an enjoyably debauched battle to the death. For the sake of captions, the most fitting description for this whole escapade would be Amelie meets Battle Royale; few other lines can paint an accurate picture of how surreal Eiji Uchida’s Greatful Dead can be.

With a film embodying such divergent traits, there is a real risk that the result would stretch the limits of plausibility. While weird violence is the central conceit behind the execution of the film, let’s not forget that this is also a film about a girl disturbed by starvation of affection. That thematic through-line may seem like a stretch given the presence of rape and hyper-violence, but appearances can be deceiving. Third Window have started 2015 on fine form with this bizarrely touching pseudo-slasher black comedy.

Thanks for reading our review of Greatful Dead

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