There's nothing quite as satisfying as watching a movie about the end of the world. Perhaps there's something about the finality of it all. A sense of closure is always good and what could possibly wrap up more loose ends than the eradication of everything? Perhaps it's some sort of selfish, childish desire to watch everything blow up real good. Or perhaps there's something so hysterically egotistical about presenting the end of the world as entertainment that the result are guaranteed to be a riot. Whatever the reason, nothing delivers quite like the sight of character actors dropping dead as loudly as possible. In order to satisfy my armageddon itch I recently watched the disaster movie Fukkatsu no hi/Virus.
As the English title of Virus would lead you to suspect, there's a bad bug going around. As the Japanese title suggests, this is an international production that pulls in talent, ideas and slow moving craziness from all over. In order to no doubt secure a place in foreign markets the film tries to take a world view of the disaster. Most disaster movies give some lip service to showing the world-wide effects of whatever is screwing up the world but this usually amounts to little more than to some extras running around a foreign looking set. Virus, however, tries for an epic sweep of the disaster. Not only is Japan represented but America and a bunch of American actors doing accents with varying degrees of success bring the picture an international sweep. Now that I think about it there was very little if any mention made of any part of Asia outside of Japan but considering the movie was two and a half hours long I really don't think it needed anything else added to the stew.
While Virus tried it's best to be a film for everyone it was still obviously Japanese at it's core. Okay, sure, the film spent huge chunks of time in Japan, was produced by a Japanese film studio and starred a Japanese cast but besides all that it still felt like a Japanese movie. A sense of ambiguity concerning the relationship between post-war Japan and the United States can often be seen in Japanese cinema and Virus is no exception. While most of the American characters are presented as being sympathetic -albeit a tad boorish- things get a little more muddy when the matter of politics comes up. There's a quite justified sense of frustration on display over the idea that Japan and the rest of the world could be destroyed by collateral damage if the Cold War ever heated up. The feeling that post-war Japan can't decide whether to like the United States or be annoyed with it's overwhelming presence is a theme that often shows up in most every Japanese film that deals with international issues in the latter half of the twentieth century. How much of this is intentional on the part of the film makers and how much of it is simply a reflection of the mores and feelings of the time is hard to say but it is an interesting bit of sub-text.
But nobody tuned into Virus for the politics, they tuned in to experience the thrill that can only come from watching loads of people die. Boy oh boy do they die. In Virus the killer plague that destroyed all vertebrate life on earth is accidentally released by Cold War scraping between the US and USSR and Japan and the rest of the world can only helplessly sit on the sidelines and die. Hmm, if people were trying to avoid politics with Virus they may have picked the wrong movie. Much like The Andromeda Strain or The Crazies or any other disease run amok film Virus is rooted in a sense of paranoia and distrust of authority figures. Part of that viewpoint may come from having workhorse director Kinji Fukasaku lensing the film. When left to his own devices the late Fukasaku would invariably side with the beleaguered individual instead of the institution that made their lives miserable. There is, however, also the feeling that at least some of the angst and malaise that Virus lovingly wallows in is borrowed from those previously mentioned films. Having the bad luck to come out at the tail end of the disaster movie craze, there is the feeling that some of the emotion in Virus is coming less from the film creators' desire to say something they strongly believe in and more from a calculated attempt to use a winning formula to draw in viewers. Only in the movies could the destruction of the world be seen as great fun for the entire family.
With most disaster films the story usually takes its time setting up the characters and situation and holds off on the wholesale destruction until well past the halfway point. Instead, a good chunk of the first part of the movie is dedicated to trying to make you feel sympathy for the future victims and talking head scenes of people sitting around conference tables and shouting lines like "We must do something about this, but what?!?" to each other. Virus, however, ditches all that and manages to bump off most of the planet within the first forty five minutes. Even though the film still manages to get in some character introductions as well as the obligatory conference table it quickly gets down to the business of pandemic death. The end of the world is surprisingly graphic and well constructed. Some of it is more than a little melodramatic but if everything is going to be over by the end of the day the idea of being restrained by proper social behavior and good taste seems a bit pointless. The scene where the characters keeled over while refusing to leave the conference table was a more than a little ridiculous but it was nice to see that they were dedicated to their job, if nothing else.
The problem is after you destroy the world what do you do for a second act? In the case of Virus it decided to go flying off the rails. I don't know if that makes for good cinema but it certainly makes for a memorable finalie. For awhile after the Earth fizzles out the remaining survivors mill around Antartica, seemingly as bereft of ideas of what to do as the script is. While there is something to be said for a movie that allows a cast as diverse as Olivia Hussey, Sonny Chiba and the ever-present George Kennedy to survive the apocolypse it does need to give them something more to do than sit around a South Pole dining room. After spinning its wheels for an hour the movie finally decides it needs to do something so it's time to blow up the world... again! Most movies are satisfied with destroying everything once but only Virus has the nerve to go ahead and take out the world a second time. While a handful of characters try to disconnect one of those Dr. Strangelove Beneath the Planet of the Apes doomsday gizmos that people in movies always seem to leave lying around. Naturally they screw it up and most of the rest of the survivors don't even bother trying to get out of the range of the strike zone and instead patiently wait until they get nuked off the face of the earth. One would think they would have tried to get out of the way but considering I sometimes can't be bothered to run an errand in the evenings since it would involve the trouble of me putting my shoes back on I guess I can't fault them.
Normally I don't summarize a movie quite the way I'm doing here but Virus isn't really a movie about surprises as it is about the triumph of the human spirit in the face of overwhelming odds or logic. Nowhere is this theme more vividly displayed than when Dr. Yoshizumi (Masao Kusakari) manages to survive the second destruction of the world and realizes he's stuck in Washington D.C. while the rest of the survivors are living on the southern tip of Chile. Amazingly, he decides to walk to where they are. Even more amazingly, he makes it! To make it absolutely perfect the viewers are treated to a montage that feels like it plays out in real time of Yoshizumi walking across the entirety of North and South America. There are scenes of him walking across bombed out deserts, scenes of him walking through forests, scenes of him forging over mountains and so on and so forth. At one point he even carries on a silent conversation with skeletons. It's wildly pretentious. It's out of control. It's awesome. Parts of Virus were tough to slog trough but, wow, that finale was worth it.
Although I'm still not sure what the actual draw of disaster movies is, I now suspect part of it is the belief the audience has in the back of their minds that, unlike the chumps in the film, they would manage to survive. Also, a continuing theme in this genre is self-sacrifice for the greater good. So either a person has the chance to survive against all odds or go out like a hero. It's the best of both worlds. Virus indulges those two feelings to the nth degree. It's the feel-good movie in which everyone dies.
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