Happiness of the Katakuris

Review by Chris Hyde

July 26, 2002

The Katakuris Players rendition of George M. Cohan's Over There.

Prolific Japanese director Takashi Miike's movies are, for the most part, not for the faint of heart. Veering into perversity and horror at any moment, these brutal slices of celluloid slash across a bloodstained screen, their jagged frames slicing the human condition into a thousand bits of jarring hyper-reality. Oddly, though, there is often a lighter touch that infuses the director's work; for example, the first hour or so of Audition, which could easily be passed off as an airy romantic comedy confection. But there's something coiled up lurking inside that simpering sweetness; what looks like innocence to the unwary is mere cover for the hidden depths of savagery to follow. Watching Miike handle this charming run up to disaster is instructive, though, for it demonstrates that the man is not just another two-bit hack tossing gore around as shock tactics. Instead, behind the camera sits a supremely talented director with an assured sense of lurid style-sure; he's got some issues, but hey, don't we all?

Miike's Happiness of the Katakuris throws another aspect or two of the filmmaker into the blender just for the thrill of it. Having previously worked making j-pop music videos in Japan, the director here takes the plot of the South Korean black comedy Choyonghan kajok (The Quiet Family) and sets it to music. The simple storyline involves a hard-luck family who buy an inn in a remote area of the countryside, only to see their first customer pass away in an amusing fashion. Fearing the consequences to their fledgling hostelry, the hapless Katakuris dig a hole and bury the body themselves, though unbeknownst to them, this corpse is hardly the last they'll see (and perhaps not the last they'll see of this one). These grave machinations seem to do little to hold the family back, however; they feel no real compunction about suddenly bursting into an exuberant song over a recently deceased patron or engaging in love-struck crooning over a son of the British Royal Family who is, somehow, also a US Navy pilot.

Other rivulets of the storyline of this whacked-out horror/musical comedy include a sumo and a schoolgirl, a couple of zombies, a fugitive, a threatening volcano, a thieving crow and some sort of out-of-place (though it's hard to imagine there's much that's truly out-of-place in the universe Miike creates here) Claymation sequences that seem to happen for no real apparent reason. The insane nature of this - and I use the word lightly - plot is only exacerbated by the over-the-top musical production numbers and the abundant enthusiasm of the cast, who cheerfully play the bumbling but good-at-heart Katakuris. Obviously, this is not a film that intends to impart too serious of a message; the loopy non-logic inherent to most musicals pretty much scuttles anything of that nature. But the whole project is hardly meaningless piffle either, as the travails of the Katakuris and their ultimate outcome reveals much about Miike's somewhat surprising view of human nature.

Made with style, humor and a boundless imagination, The Happiness of the Katakuris is an enjoyable side trip into a bizarre world where The Sound of Music just might be the favorite film of your average zombie. Much tamer than some of the gory romps on which the director has built his reputation, this film effuses a - dare I say it? - almost optimistic spirit and succeeds as an often hilarious portrait of a homespun family whose rural life goes heedlessly awry almost continually. But the plucky Katakuris simply buck up and face life's obstacles with an unbending spirit and an unbreakable maxim: When bad things happen, just burst into song. As philosophies of life and film go, there's certainly far worse ways to face the world.