Tonight I got round to watching the DVD of Happiness of the Katakuris, which I bought in the HMV sale the other day.

By the end of it I was really not sure whether I liked it or not. I don’t think I would be in a hurry to watch it again, but there are lots of little bits which I keep remembering fondly.

For some reason I had thought it was a Korean film, but it is actually by the Japanese director Takashi Miike, famous for such gore and action films as Audition, the Dead or Alive trilogy and Ichi The Killer. I have not seen any of his other films, but I have a feeling this is a bit of a departure for him.

Its a black comedy, but every now and then everyone bursts into song, and sometimes the action changes into animated clay figures. I still have no idea what the opening animated sequence was about – it was like a Terry Gilliam Monty Python linking cartoon done by Aardman under the influence of the League of Gentlemen. The promise of the new road in the film also made me thing about the League. The ending was a bit barking too.

The basic plot is that a man has been made redundant from his job selling shoes in a department store so moves to the back of beyond to open a guesthouse, having heard that a new road will be built, which will provide passing trade. He sets up with his wife, father, son and divorced daughter with her little girl. Business is very slack and the very first paying guest they get kills himself in his room.

Thinking that having their only guest top himself would not be good publicity, the family decide not to report the death but just bury the body by the lake. Their second guest is a sumo wrestler on the run with a schoolgirl. He expires while shagging the schoolgirl who suffocates under him. The family then bury the pair of them.

In the meantime the daughter falls in love with a con man who is pretending to be a (Japanese) member of the British royal family who works as a British spy and flies with the US air force, the local police are chasing a killer, and the local volcano is starting to erupt.

But that is just plot – the film is much more than just plot. With direction as knowingly intrusive as David Fincher or Robert Rodriguez at their best, the fun is in the details and in the sudden changes of tempo and mood.

Star turn has to be the great-grandfather and his ability to knock birds out of the sky by hurling lumps of wood at them. The zombie dance routine is quite amusing too.

On reflection I think that I do like it – but I’m not likely to watch it again. If that makes sense.

What I might do is watch one of Miike’s other films for comparison, but they do all sound a bit on the gruesome side. For example, there is Dead or Alive, billed as:

This motion picture contains explicit portrayals of violence; sex; violent sex; sexual violence; clowns and violent scenes of violent excess, which are definitely not suitable for all audiences.

Clowns?? Is there no level of depravity to which film directors will not sink these days?