weirdquark

Fantastic!

It's February, 1945. American forces are sweeping across the Pacific, retaking one island after another. They've landed in the Philippines in force. Japanese troops on Leyte Island are sick, starving, and cut off, with little hope of rescue or resupply.

Desertion, depravity, desperation, and paranoia ensue. But it's not quite as bleak as it sounds. There is morbid fascination, pathos, and gallows humor to be had in watching these abandoned soldiers slowly waste away in the Philippine jungle. It's grim yet somehow eminently watchable, a testament to the skill of director Kon Ichikawa, who also made the magnificent film The Burmese Harp (1956).

In the closing phase of the Second World War, Imperial Japan inserts numerous specially trained soldiers throughout the Pacific islands whose secret mission is to survive at all costs and wage an unending campaign of guerrilla warfare. This film depicts the three-decade campaign of postwar "resistance" waged on Lubang Island, Philippines by Hiroo Onoda, the very last of the infamous Japanese "holdouts" who refused to accept the war had ended, against all reason and repeated attempts to make contact.

As a film, it's great - it's dramatic and engaging, with great writing, direction, and acting. But the deeper social reality is quite disturbing. Onoda and others like him are revered by many in Japan as exemplars of grit, determination, and steadfast dedication to duty, rather than as exemplars of the kind of rigid fanaticism and pathological obedience that made a continent's worth of war crimes possible.

Neapolitans fight back against the Germans in this fantastic cinema verite film about the civilian uprising in Naples. The raw, unpolished (by Hollywood standards) cinematography lends it a documentary realism. The long-take, wide-angle shots of real locations in Naples, and scenes employing complex staging involving dozens or hundreds of people are awesome to watch. They give a real sense of the geography and rhythm of urban battle, a rock solid sense of time and place, like the action is happening for real and that you're actually there. Which is so different from the modern trend of hyperkinetic shakycam closeups that convey "chaotic busy-ness" while providing absolutely no sense of time, place, relative geography, or physical context.

Viewing recommendation: This film makes a great double feature with Everybody Go Home! (1960) aka Tutti a Casa, made two years earlier. The plot of that film takes you from the September 8, 1943 Armistice right up to the Naples uprising at the end of September.