Pretend it never happened. One of the themes that I picked up on while watching Dragonhead was that of generational issues. When Teru and Ako come across a group of adult men in an abandoned storefront one of the eldest says, “How unlucky, you should’ve come a few days later”. Fed up with the state of their lives in this mid-tribulation, a large amount of fuel has been gathered. The group intends to end their lives. Teru and Ako resist their captors and learn that the group consequently beheaded all the young people who resisted to the idea of killing themselves. Of course this is tragic that those who want to live are killed anyways.

I wonder how much of this comes from the way generations exist with each other in Japanese society. I also could not help but wonder if something is to be said about the differences between earlier generations who grew up out of post-war Japan and a new generation that knows nothing of it? Another question was if there was this sense of apathy after 1945 as well? So then there’s a feeling that ‘we have to go through this all over again so why bother’? I can only guess. My knowledge of Japanese social history is limited but generational gaps are a familiar theme within Japanese cinema that you cannot help but wonder. I could also being thinking about this way too much and have gotten lost in my own interpretation.

We learn of the cause of all the destruction and chaos when two military men rescue Teru and Ako. What they learn is that volcanoes have wiped out most of Japan and a shift in the tectonic plates has also messed around with the magnetic fields. The end result is that the shift in the fields is driving all of the survivors to madness. This clearly isn’t a case of what doesn’t kill only makes you stronger. What doesn’t kill you will only kill you a little bit later down the road. Fear is gripping the nation and the nation is clearly losing the fight for survival. The newly formed quartet comes across the remnants of a family who survived the initial blast. The father, a renowned surgeon, has removed the lobes that control fear from the brains of his two sons. The father has taken his own life but not before shooting the mother. The two boys only look on as their mother passes. Again we see apathy rear its ugly head, as Ako is clearly moved, not by the death of the parents, but by the lack of grief from the two young boys.

Embrace the darkness. Be won over by apathy. Feel nothing. Is that how you want to live? Do you call it living? Can hardship and strife be overcome by simply ignoring it? It doesn’t go away, that much is clear in Dragonhead. This is the clear theme of Dragonhead. Teru and Ako indeed make it to Tokyo though they are separated prior to their arrival. Understand that in the outskirts of Tokyo Teru broke down, saying that he was weak and not strong enough to protect Ako and himself. Teru’s epiphany comes as he enters the city and battles an apparition of Nobuo. This is Teru’s turning point. This is when Teru makes his stand against the darkness and will not allow himself to become senseless and apathetic.

He meets up with Ako in an underground storage room where foodstuffs were stored, but something isn’t right. Everyone in the storage room wanders the room aimlessly. No one answers Teru’s questions with exception to one man Teru met in the helicopter that picked up Ako and himself outside the city. Teru discovers that the food numbs your senses. “Eat this and you become like that child. Liberated from fear. You feel nothing”. Teru ponders, “What kind of world had they foreseen for those without it?” as if the food was there for such a purpose. It is as if the food was made to stop the bloodshed and madness. But as the Mother Nature rears her ugly head again can Teru and Ako escape and survive? I said a bit earlier that it is clear in Dragonhead that apathy certainly won’t aid in your survival and that is never more pronounced than near the end of the film when the storage room collapses on its occupants, crushing them beneath slabs of concrete and burning them alive. Having their fear taken away by what was in the foodstuffs has left them prone to Earth’s fury.

I think the question, ‘When the world ends, what will you do?’ on the DVD sleeve is a bit misleading. I felt that in the end its not so much a question of what would you do to survive but do you want to survive. Clearly someone in the universe of this film felt that the will to survive was just as dangerous as the means to survive.

Dragonhead is a slowly paced sci-fi/drama that will muddle the opinions of a lot of its viewers. There is a clear struggle to like this film and perhaps starting the film in the confines of a collapsed tunnel and not moving the plot along for the first 30 minutes may turn out to be the breaking point for most uninitiated with the slow pacing of a Japanese film. If you make it out of the tunnel with Teru and Ako you may just very well make it to the end of the film. That is, if you have the patience for it. I myself struggled through my first viewing of this film. Giving it a second viewing for the sake of this review I was prepared with the patience to pick up on some of the themes of the story. As much as it is a struggle for Teru and Ako to survive an obliterated Japan it may very well be a struggle for viewers to make it through Dragonhead.

The DVD: Tokyo Shock has done a great job with this film. They give a 2-disc set with the feature on one disc and on the second they picked up a couple featurettes including a video diary and promotional interviews with three of the cast members. While most studios give imports just the bare bones with at most a feature and a trailer at least there is something else to watch with this set. The Uzbekistan diary and the Making Of Dragonhead bits are the same thing. There is an interview with three of the cast members; Satoshi Tsumabuki [whom I remember from the Jam Films short Justice], Sayaka and Naohito Fujiki. Of course you get the obligatory promotion and trailer. The audio is available in English and Japanese in both 2-channel and 5.1 surround and the subtitles and clear and legible [If you must know the purist in me couldn’t bring myself to listen to the English dialogue – you’re on your own with that one]. Tokyo Shock has done a good job with an imported film. It is hard to find a DVD done this well without buying directly from a Japanese DVD house.