CheerupSilver Very Cool!!!

Bereamic Awesome Movie

Teringer An Exercise In Nonsense

Payno I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Hitchcoc When we think of the John Wayne type of World War II film, we think of a group of autonomous soldiers, driven to achieve their missions. They lose men along the way; the ways of battle take their toll. But they are usually clean, well fed, and healthy. I know from watching documentaries about this war that both American and enemy soldiers did not always have this luxury. Sometimes the cost of war was infection, starvation, and injury. There wasn't always a clean, decisive end to these maladies. This is a film which is from the Japanese perspective. The army is already in disarray, starving, full of disease, but still forced to continue its mission in Leyte. They have been defeated, but their adversaries don't know that and continue to shell them and attack them from superior positions. These soldiers are, once again, pawns of a government, lustful for power, making them expendable. This is the film equivalent of a man hanging on a cliff, hoping for one more hour of life. Around him are similar people who have turned to pillaging, killing their comrades, and, yes, even cannibalism. They are stick men, barely casting shadows in the sewage they inhabit. They share salt or kill for it. This is a hard film to watch, but anyone who does should be aware of the costs of war. Brilliantly filmed and produced.

eldino33 Napolean claimed that armies fought on their stomachs. He even plied his forces with wine the night before a battle to insure maximum energy. If NOBI does nothing else it demonstrates that the horrors of war, and the horrors of the horrors of war, are in large part a direct result of political and military miscalculation. During World War Two, the Allies were most likely the best fed and best equipped armies up until that time in history. Conversly, the Axis were generally poorly equipped and poorly fed, and this is especially true of the Japanese troops in the South Pacific and South East Asia venues. For example, the Japanese troops in Burma were given a bag of rice and expected to live off the land--beg, steal, or kill. NOBI, in essence, is a micro-view of a macro-problem. Tamura is a symbol of the result of military strategies and tactics that fail--the common man as victim. He cannot concern himself with grand events, he must survive on the most basic of levels. Yet, in all the misery and rapid decay of the Japanese war effort, Tamura tries to hold on to some semblance of human dignity in the most unthinkable situations. In Freudian terms, he has to satisfy his Ego (the self), by appealing to his Super-ego (institutionalized ethics), while satisfying the Id (hunger). Transposed to the film, he can only remain human by deciding not to eat human flesh although he is starving. In this he may succeed, although he may meet an unpleasant end. The Left Elbow Index considers seven aspects of film--acting, production sets, dialogue, artistry, character development, plot, and film continuity--on a scale of 10 for excellent, 5 for average, and 1 for it needs help. The acting, production sets, artistry, plot, and film continuity are rated average. There seems not much acting to be done, most of it consists of walking, sitting, or looking for food, with only occasional minor drama. The sets are outdoor scenes in which little can be done to change things, although the part were the Japanese soldiers cross the river is very good. The best of the artistry seems to be the good use of light and dark in a black and white film. The plot is well driven by two questions: Will Tamura die? Will he eat human flesh? And film continuity is not violated by extreme variations in the trappings that hold the movie together. There seems little character development to deal with since one seems to know pretty much how Tamura will behave from the beginning of the film, thereby rating a 1. Above average is the dialogue, most likely due to the talents of Natto Wada (screen name). I also sense that the music plays a role in the dialogue, much like a Greek chorus. The overall rating according to LEI is 5.14. Two more points need be made. In 2006, one film historian suggests the director Kon Ichiwawa implies that this 1959 film would never be allowed in 2006. If so, in my view, this brings up images of pre-WWII Japan, a not particularly pleasant prospect. And, secondly, A Japanese scholar, who happen to be a woman, told me that "Rumor has it that the Japanese lost World War Two. This is not so. Japanese men lost World War Two!" Military and political mismanagement? Or, perhaps, just the evils of war. This film is well worth seeing, and only seems to get better as time passes.

GyatsoLa I got this movie out a week after the death of Ichikawa Kon - I suppose if there is one way to mark the passing of a great director, its to raise a glass of wine to him while watching one of his greatest movies. Ichikawa had one of the finest careers in Japanese film, but as he never had a distinctive style or theme he often seems to be overlooked compared to his near contemporaries such as Ozu and Kurosawa (he was a little younger than them, but not by much). He is one of those directors who defies auteur theories - its likely that his wife (who wrote the screenplay for this and many other of his movies) was as much responsible for the quality of the movies as he was. But at his best, he was as good as any Japanese film maker at the time. In particular, he had great technical skills, allowing him to tell complex stories in an accessible manner. But in terms of theme, this movie could hardly be simpler - war is hell. No really, its seriously hell.Fire on the Plain doesn't follow the normal war genre rules. There is no real beginning - we start as the wretched Tamura, who is a regular private (although it is implied he is more thoughtful and educated than most of the others - at one stage it is shown he understands English, but he clams up when the others ask him how he knows it) is ordered to hospital, as his unit is already in an appalling state. The soldiers are defeated and starving to death. They are no longer an army, just a rag bag group of refugees - hunted by the locals, and pretty much ignored by the Americans, who have bigger fish to fry. Hunger and despair is driving the soldiers to the edge and beyond of madness.In typical Ichikawa style, its not all just grim - its oddly funny in parts (a very black humour of course).The high points of this movie to me are the outstanding performances from the leads and the vivid photography. The characters, in all their humanity, but also their complete loss of humanity, are all too believable. This is that rare film - one which will refuse to erase itself from your head, even if you want to forget it.

Leonardo_poppes The main achievement of this film is that though racially unipolar, the film still manages to carve out a tableaux of war portrayals that leave a lasting identification with whoever may view it, and whoever was present at this time. Though good films may have the ability of universalizing their subjects, which is often a hard thing to do; great films have the ability of universalizing their unipolar subjects, which is what this film does.Instead of carving a context of unity, the film depicts the Japanese in the sick finality of the Phillipines war-front in February, 1945, making signs for pacifism or war, but rather making signs of the feelings, death, destruction, victory and sickness of war with the bloody hands of the defeated.Far different, and superior, to films such as Apocalypse Now and Full Metal Jacket, both which needed a satirical methodology of trivializing and depersonalizing the American troupes, and using all races as one struggle, which is fine, yet not as grand as a film that uses one race and view, which would look fascist if created in America, to convey the horror of war and show what it is really like.The only way the main character makes it through this movie to the end, is by being sick, thence inedible; hence through this character, through his sickness, his saving face, we see the end of WWII in the Phillipines in February of 1945, and the way in which the Americans, Japanese and Phillipinians came together in bloody acts of warfare where you live to die.The film is patently influenced by a neorealist way of filmic portrayal, which is original and beneficial to a viewer, whether then or now, for the neorealist techniques it employs conveys all the horrors of war in pictorial form, whether a showcase for pacifism or 'militaristic responsibility'. Like Germania Anno Zero, by Roberto Rossellini, a story emerges from the environment and the conditions associated with it.The film's opening, with the two-way discussion between the two Japanese soldiers, prefigures and reechoes the events. Through this opening we feel that the struggle is human against human, and human with human; it shows that they relied on each other to face the enemy in the past battles, but now, in this opening, or 'pivot' of the experiences of the Japanese in the Phillipines, new information is relayed to the main character Tamura, giving a presentiment of a cannibal reliance on one another if they wish to survive.The jungle is gritty, wet and thick, and the sky is not infrequently cloudy and pouring. We wade with the stragglers though puddles and marshes, as sick as the land around them. Nameless cadavers are strewn everywhere. Every now and then one can not tell if they are bodies, rocks or corn. Apparently there is no difference here, all is dead and sick. All is dying. All they have lest to feed upon are rare monkeys and dead bodies of fallen comrades and/or nameless enemies.Often Tamura meets a fallen other near death. Though crushed in spirit, and crushing his, some offer up their bodies for him to eat, but he refuses; he still, like Hiroshi Kawaguchi as Nishi in Giants and Toys, will not droop into the death of dignity and Japanese morals; for this is all he really has to hold up for his survival, a dignity of self. Hence, when Nagamatsu is dissecting a soldier for consumption, he shoots him because of it. Tamura may be used to the killing, but to the sickness of killing and pillaging he can't decipher. He is neither a good man or a bad man. He wishes to survive, but will not go the extra mile beyond simple straight-war-killing. His self belonged dead on the battlefield, he isn't happy here to wade and wipe the weak for his survival.The sickness he carrys he sees everywhere, in everyone; and sadly he lacks the ethical rationale of thinking either thinking entirely about others, since he can't give up his body for them since of his contagious malady, or thinking entirely about himself, since he sees the sickness in everyone, though still killing them even if they do no harm. Seen in his attack on the two Philippians's in the hut. He can't see anyone. No one can see anyone. The only see an aversion from malady and an adversion to health, the heart of survival instincts.Often, an arm appears pointing to the left of the screen, towards what must be hope, for there, in that far Thule lies their freedom. Yet it is blocked by American soldiers, leaving the Japanese stragglers to slowly die in this disconsolate dirt. Even a church tower appears, reflecting the light off an unseen sun. But on closer inspection crows flutter wildly about it; religion too is an air of poison.Nobi, the Japanese title of the film, gives more evidence to the themes, or feelings of the film: the servitude to fate, the heaviness of existence under leaders and lives controlled by others. Its proper Anglophone translation has a subject of heavy debate among historians, as non-Koreans translate it as "slave" and "slavery", while many Koreans argue that nobi was not a slave system, but a servant class system that does not meet the criteria for slavery. A way to typically to escape wrenching poverty. This improves upon the war theme, and symbolism of soldiery.Isn't it important at the time period to ask ourselves what the purpose is of what will become our won history? Should we be comfortable of letting it unroll without conscious effort for change? Is it not who we are fighting, that age old history question, but rather why are we fighting? Fires on the Plain is with Eiji Funakoshi, Osamu Takizawa, and Mickey Curtis; based on a novel by Shohei Ooka. In Japanese with subtitles.