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I've seen many similar-theme Russian films, as well as classic American ones, but Kon Ichikawa's 1959 classic surpasses them in its unrelenting, unflinching view of war.
No heroics here, nor brave self-sacrifice, nor valiant effort for glory.
Rather, Ichigawa shows three Japanese soldiers reduced to animals, clawing and scratching for food, huddling in mud and rain to avoid detection by American soldiers, and marching like zombies towards what they increasingly sense is an unattainable escape.
Why, then, watch this utterly black film?
Because it isn't.
Almost magically, the viewer senses a power in the men's futility, a humanity in the most inhuman of their actions.
The lead actor, Eiji Funakoshi, speaks but a few words the entire film but, in the history of film, surely there is no more powerful a performance almost completely communicated by body language and eyes.
In the wonderful accompanying information, the director relates how he asked the young actor to appear thin since privation had to be believable. The first day of filming, the young man collapsed and had to be taken to hospital: his wife related that he had starved himself for two weeks immediately prior. The film, Ichikawa continues, had to be delayed for two months while Eiji fully recovered.
See this immediately.
No citizen of a nation involved in the armed occupation of another should fail to see this.
Follow Ups:
One of those rare peices of work that should be considered art rather than film narrative.
-Tom §.
Ichikawa pretty well book-ended the subject of the futility of war with the very dark 'Fires' and with the terribly moving 'The Burmese Harp.'
Pity so many who should see these films think that them being 1. foreign 2. B/W, 3. "old" means they are a waste of time.
Thanks for bringing Kon's work up; timeless masterpieces.
Best,
C.
d
Idi i smotri (come and see) -- one of those Russian films.
But what's his hip to thigh to waist to chest ratio?
"You can safely assume you have created God in your own image when he hates all the same people you do."
36-24-36, for instance, is not a ratio.
I started watching it a couple weeks ago but decided to save it for... later...
The beginning at least was way overwrought.
Also I developed a slight distaste from its overt sympathy for the occupiers of another country, a country moreover that they had brutalized ("Bataan Death March") -- not that they hadn't done the same stuff to other members of their "co-prosperity sphere".
I do plan on returning some day, and the transfer was excellent.
clark
d
so I figured he must be an equal opportunity evaluator.
Guess I was wrong.
"You can safely assume you have created God in your own image when he hates all the same people you do."
neglect to mention them is puritanical. You choose your girlfriend(s) only for their conversation, of course? You think physical beauty is a unfair to consider in grading actors, in any roles? You would be convinced of a Roseanne Barr seducing 007 in his next outing? Woody Allen playing a romantic lead?
In art, as in life, looks are important. To pretend otherwise is to appear naive of both.
a
REALLY think lower body, though....
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