Evengyny Thanks for the memories!

Smartorhypo Highly Overrated But Still Good

Pluskylang Great Film overall

Odelecol Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

salg4 This is probably the greatest war film and certainly one of the greatest films. There's no sentimentality, no patriotic agenda, not even a hopeful message of universal brotherhood in this bleak glimpse of what we can only call hell. It's this quiet rigor and lack of manipulation that give the film its astounding power. There aren't any attempts to make a hero out of Ichikawa's protagonist Tamura either. He's just a poor doomed sap trying to stay alive in a world of horror who hopes, but isn't sure, he can hang on to his humanity in the process. Ichikawa's fierce lack of cant and illusion make Fires on the Plain stand alone. Ichikawa died February 2008.

dbborroughs The title is a reference to the destruction of the remnants of a harvest, like rice husks, by farmers who burn them creating fires on the plains. This is a bleak tale of the destruction of the Japanese soldier.The story is set in the closing days of the Philippines campaign as a soldier with TB who returns from a hospital because since he can walk, they have no room for him. His superior officers don't want him around since he's really too sick to work or fight. Abused by his officer he's sent back to the hospital with orders to either be admitted or kill himself. They still won't take him and he's soon left to wander across the war ravaged landscape trying to find help or a place to stay or even just food. Its a bleak journey with no hope in sight and only death and man's inhumanity to man at every turn.Billed as a harrowing journey into the dark heart of man and war this is also a very funny movie. This isn't to say its not horrifying, it is at times, but its also darkly comic. How could it not be? Here is a film where madness and insanity run rampant, people are constantly trying to hustle tobacco leaves for food, trying to get even a slightly better pair of shoes, trying to remain a Japanese soldier in the face of absurdity by marching constantly but never getting anywhere and you can't help but laugh. To be sure things go darker as it becomes clear that cannibalism maybe, literally and figuratively, the only way to survive, but at the same time there is something uncomfortably funny about the human comedy.Hailed as a great anti-war film its stark photographic style makes clear the insanity of war even as it dazzles our eye with its beauty. Here we see landscapes full of bodies that include the soldier and the civilian. set amid fields forests and trees that would otherwise be, and to some extent still are, quite beautiful. Its a jarring sensation.What intriguing is that I read that this is based on a novel about the redemptive power of Christianity. The director removed all over the religious references to hope and salvation and instead used it as to show that life stinks, war stinks worse and that there is, ultimately no hope.Intellectually I admire the film, emotionally I don't. Part of it is a strident downbeat score which, for me over accentuates what we are seeing on the screen. Its almost gilding the lily since the imagery is so strong it doesn't really need to have the music force you into feeling one way or another.Is it a great film, thats for you to decide. For certain its unlike any other war film, bloody, horrific and real in ways that big budgeted films claim to be but never are. This is not for those adverse to blood and gore since its here in spades.Definitely worth a look.

MARIO GAUCI This is undoubtedly the most harrowing black-and-white war film that I've watched; as a matter of fact, the only Western director during this time to remotely approach its level of intensity and sheer visceral power in his work was Samuel Fuller. By the way, I had attended a Kon Ichikawa retrospective at London's National Film Theatre in September 2002, but only managed to catch some of his work made between 1960 and 1973.The film is certainly as depressing as it's reputed to be; however, it also displays welcome touches of black humor throughout - the 'dead' man who wakes up to answer a querying soldier and promptly 'dies' again, the deliciously ironic shoe exchange sequence, a moribund eccentric telling the famished hero which part of the body he should eat, etc. Incidentally, the script was written by a woman - Natto Wada, the director's own wife!Ichikawa is a versatile and prolific film-maker whose reputation may not be as high as it was during his peak years (1956-65), but his direction here is often striking - the startling pre-credits sequence (the hero is violently rebuked by his superior officer for being discharged from hospital earlier than expected!), the death of a surrendering Japanese at the hands of a gun-toting Philippine woman, the bombing of a hospital (with the medical staff running away to save themselves, leaving the wounded soldiers behind to crawl out of the shack at their own limited pace), the automated march in the rain of the disillusioned soldiers (which also involves the afore-mentioned business with the shoes that, actually, recalls a similar scene in ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT [1930]), a hill littered with the bodies of soldiers attempting to climb it, the finale, etc. Surely one of the film's major assets is the stunning cinematography of the unforgiving and desolate muddy landscape.The film is notorious for treating the taboo subject of cannibalism (almost 10 years before it became a staple of horror movies) but Ichikawa's approach is not only subtle but highly effective: the flesh is actually referred to as "monkey meat", while the hero is seen partaking only once (and promptly spits out the piece along with most of his decaying teeth!); conversely, when the weak underling soldier (played by Mickey Curtis who, despite his name, was a Japanese pop idol of the time!) rabidly indulges, the ground nearby is splashed with blood.In the supplements, Ichikawa remembers that Method-practicing lead actor Eiji Funakoshi (whose portrayal is unforgettable, by the way) arrived on the set at starvation point - with the result that production was forced to shut down for two weeks until he recuperated! Donald Richie's perceptive interview favors the nihilism of the film over the underlying patriotism behind such gut-wrenching recent Hollywood fare as SAVING PRIVATE RYAN (1998).FIRES ON THE PLAIN is universally considered to be one of its director's top efforts and, out of the several films of Ichikawa I've watched, the closest to it in spirit are THE BURMESE HARP (1956; another character-driven war film but with a spiritual tone, and which is also available on DVD from Criterion) and ENJO aka CONFLAGRATION (1958; which was actually given a limited theatrical showing locally, as part of a foreign-film week, a couple of years ago). Personally, I also have a particular soft spot for the director's stunningly stylized color extravaganza, AN ACTOR'S REVENGE (1963), which I've actually caught twice at the NFT in 1999 and the afore-mentioned 2002 retrospective.

tdl21 Fires on the plain directed by Kon Ichikawa and written by Shohei Ooka and Natto Wada is a World War two movie which is finally not showing the allies fighting the axis powers, but the Japanese fighting and struggling for their lives on the Philippines. The main characters name is Tamura , played by Eiji Funakoshi, and he is a soldier leaving his regiment because of him being sick. All he has on him is a hand grenade, his gun and some potatoes. Like this, he is trying to make his way to the hospital in order to get a doctor and a cure for his disease. But since the hospital turned him away and gets destroyed, he begins a long walk. Throughout the whole movie, Tamura remains a bit cowardish, but very civil, when the other soldiers become more like animals by using their basic instincts for survival Tamura is still remaining human and would not degrade. A scene which has influenced me a lot to think positively and different about this war movie is, when Tamura comes into a Phillipino village which is completely deserted. There, he fights a dog and finds a lot of corpses of Japanese soldiers stacked up in front of a church. This makes Tamura think and even more scared than he already is. That shows that the soldier is not a brave killing machine, but a servant to higher beings and human most importantly. After he turns away from the corpses, two Phillipinos (a couple or brother and sister : very close relationship) return to the village in order to get their stash of salt back. The main character of the movie wants to be friendly at first, although he walked up to them with his gun, but shoots the woman once she starts screaming. Her brother/boyfriend/husband then runs away in fear and after a moment Tamura follows him and shoots wildly at the fleeing Filipino. He does not hit him. After Tamura picks up the bag of salt , something very precious , he drops his gun into a river. This gesture is very important in order to understand Kon Ichikawa's/Shohei Ooka's profiling of Tamura and the war. Comparing this movie to other World War 2 movies, it is not typical at all. Of course all movies have suffering heroes, but their heroes are more heroic than Tamura. He expresses everything that is human: he is getting manipulated , he is weak , he gets scared , he has hope. This is typical for Japanese World War two movies and for Japanese society. Since World War two is not a discussed theme in Japanese society, Japanese are likely to put Japanese in the second World War in the role of the victim. This victimisation is also very visual in this movie. One of the examples is Tamura, another one the piled up bodies of Japanese soldiers in front of the church and another important one is, when the Japanese soldiers are trying to cross a street and the Americans are already waiting there for them and shooting all of the Japanese soldiers which have worse equipment and are fed worse and have no health equipment or anything alike. In my personal conclusion I have to say that it is worth seeing this film in order to finally see a movie from the other side than usual. It also has no nationalistic propaganda which could've been easily built in. Once you have watched the movie fully, you will be able to see the horrors of the second World War to its total extent.