5
May/13

THE MODERN SCHOOL OF FILM: THE HAPPINESS OF THE KATAKURIS

5
May/13
Takashi Miike riffs on multiple genres in the endlessly delightful HAPPINESS OF THE KATAKURIS

Takashi Miike riffs on multiple genres in the endlessly delightful HAPPINESS OF THE KATAKURIS

THE HAPPINESS OF THE KATAKURIS (Takashi Miike, 2001)
IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St.
Tuesday, May 7, 8:15
212-924-7771
www.ifccenter.com

Japanese genre king Takashi Miike, who has made more than one hundred films in his twenty-two-year career, outdoes himself in The Happiness of the Katakuris, an endlessly inventive tale of the Katakuris, a family that moves to the middle of nowhere to run a country inn. The only problem is that when guests finally arrive, they all end up dead — in bizarre, ridiculous ways — and the father decides to bury them instead of reporting the incidents, in order to protect the inn and the family’s future. Miike (Ichi The Killer, Audition, Thirteen Assassins) masterfully mixes comedy, romance, Claymation, music, murder, and mayhem in this enormously entertaining and highly original movie that is filled with a never-ending bag of surprises. The Happiness of the Katakuris is screening in a 35mm print May 7 at 8:15 as part of the IFC Center series “The Modern School of Film” and will be followed by a discussion with Brooklyn-based choreographer Mark Morris; the series continues May 9 with John M. Stahl’s 1945 melodrama Leave Her to Heaven, with Neil LaBute on hand to talk about it, May 13 with Andrei Tarkovsky’s The Mirror and Bill T. Jones, and May 28 with Vittorio De Sica’s Miracle in Milan and Laurie Anderson.