Nobi

In Ichikawa Kon's film _The Harp of Burma_ the company of soldiers led by Captain Inoue, although a bit travel worn and homesick, looked at least to be in decent health and well fed in the foreign environs of Burma. However, in his film _Fires on the Plain_ the Japanese soldiers stationed on the Island of Leyte in the Phillipines are malnourished, desperate men who are willing to do anything to survive

The first scene in the film depicts Pvt. Tamura being slapped viciously by his superior. The superior is angry because Tamura returned to their regiment. a sufferer of tuberculosis, Tamura is unable to support himself and relies on the other soldiers, who can barely forage enough food for themselves, to gather food for him. Not wanting a dependent in their midst, Tamura superior sends him back to the hospital along with a few potatoes. Tamura does, however, have one more key item in his possession: a hand grenade.

If he tires of living or is unable to, Tamura is to kill himself with the grenade. The grenade appears several times in the film. One can almost see the gears turning in his head, an inner struggle whether he wants to live or die. However, each times he decides to keep trudging along.

Tamura does in fact arrive back at the hospital, but of course he is refused. The doctors will only let men who are very near death to stay in the hospital. Tamura, unwanted in his own camp, decides to stat with a group of stragglers who have also been cast out of their respective companies. Tamura is able to make friends with these individuals at least until the Americans begin bombing the area. The doctors leave the patients, first taking all the food, to be blown up in the bombing, and Tamura and friend are separated to the four winds.

Tamura continues his travels and eventually arrives in a small village where he kills a Fillpino girl who would not stop screaming. He also tries to kill her boyfriend, but he runs away successfully.

Tamura begins to care for the wounded girl, but pushes her out of the way when he discovers a hidden cache of salt. He soon continues his journey to no real destination.

_Fires on the Plain_ is a brutal film which depicts the remnants of the once powerful Japanese army struggling to survive, but without any hope of ever being truly rescued. These soldiers just want to live for a few hours longer, their primal instincts to survive much stronger than dieing in service of the Emperor. A will to survive that will even make some of them eat "Monkey Meat."

However, even in this bleak film there are some signs of humanity. Tamura although tubercular and emancipated willingly shares his few rations and his precious salt even when he has little. There are moments of semi friendship between Tamura and the stragglers, and also between Tamura and another soldier named Nagamatsu, however, the outlook is bleak for our pleasant spoken Tamura.

Based on a novel written by Ooka Shohei.

1945. The US recapture of the Philippines is nearing its conclusion, resulting in a Japanese unit being cut off and lacking supplies. In order to reduce the supply problem Private Tamura is ordered to check into the hospital and, if unsuccessful, kill himself. His trip to the hospital ends up being a harrowing journey.

A Japanese war drama that shows the horrors of war in brutal, unvarnished fashion. As much a survival drama as a war drama - we hardly see the enemy at all during the film - Tamura's experiences are harrowing and realistic.

Not perfect though. The film is quite linear and plodding, which is to be expected for the nature of the plot, but it is too slow at times, feeling laboured. While meant to show the inanity and insanity of war, some aspects of the plot aren't entirely watertight.

Still, a great exposition on the wastefulness and depravity of war.

Despite its flaws, Fires On The Plain is one of the most harrowing and powerful films I've ever seen. With its incredible stark black and white photography, we're taken on an emotionally exhausting journey through how far a man will go to survive. It takes it to the bleak extremes and pushes the limits. It's incredible and fascinating to watch the "everyman" main character on his episodic adventure and has great points about the devastating effects of war on the human condition. This could've easily been a favourite if not for some points that hold it back. Although the journey later blossoms, the music is definitely far too overdramatic and it opens with far too on-the-nose exposition that could've easily been summed up in a few more simple visuals. Unfortunately for the excellent cinematography, the editing isn't as good and perhaps its suffers due to the amateur performances who struggle to keep up continuity in different angles. However, these flaws don't distract from its power, as depressing as it is.

8/10

Every American who thinks he or she understands World War Two should see this movie. Few Hollywood films about the war have defied the stereotype of Japanese soldiers as emotionless brutes obeying orders without thinking. We like to think that every Japanese man was ready and able to fight to the death, right up to the day we bombed Nagasaki. "Fires on the Plain" shows a different reality: troops pathetically undersupplied, demoralized and starved to the point of cannibalism. They euphemistically refer to human flesh as "monkey meat." The movie and novel on which it was based also put to death the myth that Japanese soldiers all preferred death to surrender: They had good reason to believe that their enemies were in no mood to take prisoners. To me it raises a question most Americans would rather avoid: If the Japanese military was so beaten down at this point in the war, why was it necessary to nuke Hiroshima?

A harrowing masterpiece on the sheer madness and despair of war, Fires on the Plain (Nobi) is not going to be to everybody's taste: this is a war movie in the truest possible sense of the term, one that resorts neither to flag-waving patriotism nor saccharine sentimentality. Nobi cuts deep, it's ugly, tenebrous and bleak as few things ever committed on celluloid will ever be. This is war behind the cannons, with no triumphs or heroes, no moral victories or defeats to be had, just a handful of gaunt and terrible-looking men strewn across a land ravaged by war like penitents fleeing a great disaster. The characters defy moral judgment because they are creatures beset by a great woe, a woe that does not permit questions of a moral nature. War and survival. Pitting one's will against the other's in a battlefield arena. The loser is simply removed from existence.

Tamura, soldier in the Japanese Imperial army, is discharged from his platoon and ordered to report in a nearby hospital on account of him coughing blood and being disliked by the rest of the platoon. He's told to never come back and instead commit suicide by hand grenade in case the hospital rejects him. Which it does. The hospital is nothing but a shack made of wooden planks and the hospital surgeon simply tells him that if he's capable of walking he's just fine. It is in that shabby excuse of a hospital that one of the most harrowing scenes of the film takes place. As the area is carpet bombed by American planes the doctors and those who can walk and sustain themselves flee from the hospital and into the woods. Moments before the hospital is blown to pieces, the gaunt and crippled figures of the sick and injured crawl out of it in every manner of posture, dressed in their sickly white robes, as if the building is some kind of beast spewing viscera and filth out upon the earth.

That is Nobi's greatest success; the stark and brooding depiction of the suffering of war in simple but evocative images, without melodrama or pseudo-heroism. Soldiers cross a marsh, wading knee-deep in mud, move across the opposite bank and into a field only to discover enemy tanks hiding in the woods, their lights shining like malignant eyes as they scan the dark. A procession of injured soldiers, dirty and half-mad, crossing a road, dropping to the ground on the sound of enemy planes. Buzzards feasting on a pile of dead bodies. An abandoned village. A mad soldier that believes himself to be Buddha sitting under a tree, covered with flies and his own excrement, offering his arm to be eaten by Tamura when he's dead. These are the images Kon Ichikawa conjures for our eyes, merciless and unflinching in their poignancy but honest and raw.

Nobi doesn't rush to get somewhere. It is content to follow Tamura's travels through the war-torn land as he tries to reach the regrouping center of Palompa, and observe the madness and obscenities of war. The movie wades through the sludge of the horror of war, slow and brooding, just like the characters it follows. The final thirty minutes with Tamura taking refuge with two deserters who feed on 'monkey meat' are the closest Nobi comes to adhering to conventional narratives and they're no less powerful for that matter. Strikingly photographed in black and white, with great performances from the cast, and Ichikawa's assured direction, Nobi is not only among the best war movies to be made but also among the finest of Japanese cinema.