Directed by: Kon Ichikawa.
Written by: Natto Wada based on the novel by Shohei Ooka.
Starring: Eiji Funakoshi (Tamura), Osamu Takizawa (Yasuda), Mickey Curtis (Nagamatsu), Mantarô Ushio (Sergeant), Kyû Sazanka (Army surgeon), Yoshihiro Hamaguchi (Officer), Asao Sano (Soldier), Masaya Tsukida (Soldier), Hikaru Hoshi (Soldier).
Kon
Ichikawa’s Fires on the Plain is one of the bleakest war films I have ever
seen. Set in the waning days of the war, in the Philippines in 1945, the film depicts
the final days of the decimated Japanese army who have been roundly defeated,
but have not yet surrendered. The few surviving Japanese soldiers are basically
split up into small groups, making their way across the island to join the last
Japanese stronghold – which may or may not still exist. During the course of
the movie, we will see the Japanese soldiers do the most inhumane things to
each other imaginable.
Yet
for all the bleakness in the film, Ichikawa infuses the film with some gallows
humor as well. When the film opens, the main character, Tamura (Eiji Funkoshi)
has returned from the hospital to his unit after being treated for
tuberculosis. But his superiors don’t want him back – they tell him he cannot
possibly have been cured in such a short period of time, and order him to go
back to the field hospital – and if they refuse to admit him, then he should
just blow himself up with his lone grenade. This plays almost like a scene out
of Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 – Tamura is damned no matter what he does. There
are other moments of dark levity – a seemingly dead soldier who takes his face
out of the mud just long enough to respond to his commanding officer, or a
reference to Chaplin, when Tamura tries to replace his worn out boots with some
that aren’t quite as bad. Fires on the Plain is as bleak as movies gets – but
Ichikawa still sees the absurdity of it all.
Fires
on the Plain contains haunting images – stacks of rotting corpses, that Tamura
and his fellow travelers pass by without even noticing – as if the sight is so
common its lost all meaning to them. The fact that Tamura is still alive is
nothing short of miraculous, but he soldiers on. He eventually teams up with
two other soldiers to make their way across the island. They consider turning
themselves in – the Japanese code of honor that we often see in WWII movies
about the Japanese that said they could never surrender doesn’t seem to apply
here. They don’t much care anymore. They try and shoot monkeys for food – and
when that runs scarce, the talk turns to cannibalism – and soon the men are not
just fighting the enemy and the elements – but each other.
The
film never really looks at the enemy with any clarity. The closest it comes is
when Tamura considers surrendering, but witnesses what happens when one of his
fellow soldiers finds the Americans to surrender – and figures he’ll be better
off on his own. The enemy is hardly the point anymore anyway – Tamura and
everyone else knows they have lost the war. Now, it all a matter of survival. Tamura
is basically an insect who refuses to die – like the ant that crawls across his
skin. But unlike his fellow soldiers, he holds onto whatever little humanity
the war has left him. Those around him are giving in to their base urges – but
to the end of the film, Tamura holds onto his humanity – although wherever he’s
walking at the end of the movie, you get the sense that he’s unlikely to get
there – and even if he does, he probably won’t see anything different than what
he has already seen.
In short, Fires on the Plain is a bleak vision of hell – but one that like it hero maintains it view of humanity. The movie shows, as good as any, the horrors of war, and the suffering it causes. It is a haunting movie – one I will not soon forget.
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