Fires on the Plain

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Habit N Probably the greatest anti-war film ever produced Rated 5/5 Stars •  Rated 5 out of 5 stars 02/05/23 Full Review william d Not much of a story arc here, just a few men living in absolute misery. Rated 2/5 Stars •  Rated 2 out of 5 stars 03/31/23 Full Review s r Watched on Kanopy. Crazy anti war film that is unique and oddly compelling. Rated 4/5 Stars •  Rated 4 out of 5 stars 03/31/23 Full Review Audience Member It is the Philippines. It is 1945. The once proud Fascist imperial armies of Japan have been decimated. All that remains are straggling, starving soldiers marchin' on, mostly devoid of even superior officers. Meanwhile, the Americans are in full force and can ambush them at will. Guerrillas and even civilians can also kill them at will. Because of the Bushido code, most are still not seriously contemplating surrender. But many dream of it regardless. The protagonist here gradually realizes to his horror that many of his fellow soldiers have resorted to cannibalism to survive. He vows to be different but is sorely tempted to do likewise. They march on through the wilderness of the Philippines to avoid detection as long as possible. Eventually he finds a soldier who is attempting to become a Buddha, refusing to leave a tree he is resting against, and when the main character gets up to leave, the other soldier raises his arm and says, "it won't be much longer, why don't you stay and eat me." He proceeds on and eventually teams up out of loneliness and desperation with another soldier who seems more energetic than the rest who offers him "monkey meat". He is suspicious because he's seen no monkeys and eventually realizes he's been consuming human flesh all along. There is a scene in which he waits for an ideal time to surrender. He even has a white flag, but he sees another soldier surrender first who gets machine-gunned by a female civilian, which is perfectly understandable considering the vast extent of the war crime atrocities committed against the people of the Philippines. Yes, this film is horrific, nearly veering into horror film realm, and unfortunately a true story. It gets a 100% critics approval rating. Rated 5/5 Stars •  Rated 5 out of 5 stars 02/14/23 Full Review Audience Member If you like starvation, desperation, and nothing else, than this is the film for you. I however, had to struggle through this film, but not without reason. Its got great cinematography and characters, but still, I would hesitate to think of this film as "essential viewing." Rated 2.5/5 Stars •  Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars 02/09/23 Full Review Audience Member To what extent are the Japanese willing to go in order to bring more credible performances? According to IMDB, the cast was fed to a minimum and were forbidden from looking after their personal hygiene. They only had the aid of nurses. However, actor Eiji Funakoshi (Tamura) was never told not to eat. It was his decision to starve himself without anybody knowing about it... until he collapsed. Production was shut down for 2 weeks. If <i>The Burmese Harp</i> (1956) was Ichikawa's humanism testament, <i>Nobi</i> acts as a counterpart of dehumanization, anxiety, fear, madness, cannibalism and delusions. It achieves to be tense and psychologically disturbing, but it also manages to go even one step forward, placing Tamura as a character on his final stage of tuberculosis, slowly losing his humanity, but internally struggling to keep his sanity and adhering himself to his principles before he loses all connection with reality. The constant voiceover proves this struggle to be true. Hence, we have a powerful film that, despite some brief parenthetical digressions, never loses track of its course and offers the challenge to its audiences of making a decision: whether to empathize with the madness of the characters or not. I chose to do so, because I am pretty sure that this hellish psychological war-induced claustrophobia can only be understood by people that have tasted and smelled the battlefield and seen the repercussions in their comrades. I am praying that none of us here present are given a chance to prove whether if the depiction was accurate or not. Ichikawa always considered the quality of his original WWII-themed sources for the purposes of film adaptation. I trust him. 94/100 P.S. This is one of those movies that slowly grows in you and shouldn't be rated immediately. Rated 4.5/5 Stars •  Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars 01/22/23 Full Review Read all reviews

Fires on the Plain

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