I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity. -Dwight D. Eisenhower
Following General Eisenhower’s lead, any war film that accurately and faithfully depicts the brutality and the futility of war, is by definition an anti-war movie.
The War Ultimatum
The opening shot of Fires on the Plain (Nobi), is a close-up of an enraged and furious squad leader dressing down a private, in a fashion every bit as brutal as George C. Scott's belittling the shell shocked soldier in Patton.
A quick two shot reveals the private being reprimanded as the sickly Private Tamura (Eiji Funakoshi), the soldier who will be escorting the viewer through the next hour and forty-five minutes of war as hell.
Dying of consumption, Private Tamura is given an ultimatum, to either make the excruciating trek through the decimate and dangerous war zone to the distant military hospital, and beg admittance, or commit suicide. Tamura sets out with little more than a few yams and his rifle.
The Nature of War
As with all great Japanese film makers in the vein of Akira Kurosawa, Kenji Mizoguchi and Yasujiro Ozu, the natural settings are exquisitely shot, and essential to the story; especially true in a film about mass destruction and starvation.
Some of the more memorable moments are simple and meditative; as when Tamura lies on his belly, with his face in a stream; or when he is distracted momentarily, playing with an ant on a log, but shocked back to reality when the ant bites him.
Such subtlety contrasts strikingly with a scene of soldiers crawling in unison across a washed out dirt road under cover of night, cut together with a matching shot of the very same soldiers scattered along an embankment, shriveled and curled up like ants singed beneath a giant magnifying glass.
Fires on the Plain is not all nihilistic nightmares of the apocalypse; Kon Ichikawa strategically places throughout, standard issue sequences of War Movie Action; complete with bombings, fire fights, and troop maneuvers.
Walking To Hell and Back
When watching Fires on the Plain, one is struck by the amount of walking involved in war movies, and in reality; soldiers marching in platoons; soldiers marching in victory parades; soldiers marching in funerals.
The further Tamura walks, the darker the atmosphere becomes; and more and more zombie like; walking through a wasteland of twisted and contorted bodies (a mirror image of this shot was re-created by Roland Joffé, in depicting Dith Pran’s hellish trek through The Killing Fields of Cambodia).
Culminating in the most powerful and shocking scene in the film. Tamura comes across a soldier sitting against a barren tree on a hilltop all alone. The soldier begins to talk to Tamura about how a giant airplane, Mr. Airplane, is going to swoop down and save him.
He then lowers his head; looking down at his lap; he then lifts his hands from between his legs, and hundreds of black flies swarm out from between his legs. The scene is amazing, startling, and beautiful.
If someone were to walk in on the final few minutes of Fires on the Plains, especially the climax, not knowing what the movie was, they could easily mistake it for George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead.
Modern movie goers have long since become immune to the horrific atrocities crafted with great care and poetry by director Kon Ichikawa's wife and screenwriter, Natto Wada. But, few will have seen them depicted with such Gothic artistry.
