FIRES ON THE PLAIN Movie Review

Nobi

It's often the case that great novels make mediocre movies; it may be that filmmakers are too fearful of rejection by critics and audiences to impose a personal vision on already venerated material. I haven't read the novel that was the basis for Kon Ichikawa's 1959 story of World War II, Fires on the Plain, but if it's half as powerful, original, and shocking as the film, I'd be too frightened to open it. Set on an island in the Philippines as the war is drawing to an end, this is a portrait of the end of civilization in miniature. Japanese soldiers have been fighting for months; exhausted, without supplies, and insane with hunger, they begin eating one another. At first devouring corpses killed in battle, they soon begin doing their own killing, describing their prey to each other—and to themselves—as “monkey meat.” The story's protagonist, Tamura (Eiji Funakoshi) is known to have tuberculosis, and he's therefore the last person on the island in danger of becoming dinner. Yet his affliction also gives him another kind of distance from the horror around him—he's not desperate to live another day because he knows that it's pointless for him, so he remains a dignified, horrified observer: the only sober man at a nightmarish bacchanal. The widescreen black-and-white images and stark makeup effects help to fill out this film's infernal vision; the sights resemble what we might imagine as the landscape of another planet, yet we're constantly reminded by this true story that the world we're seeing is not another, but our very own.

NEXT STOP … The Burmese Harp, Forbidden Games, Europa, Europa

1959 105m/B JP Eiji Funakoshi, Osamu Takizawa, Mickey Custis, Asao Suno; D: Kon Ichikawa; W: Natto Wada; C: Setsuo Kobayashi; M: Yashushi Akutagawa. VHS MRV, HHT, NLC