Fires on the Plain - Criterion Collection

Fires on the Plain - Criterion Collection
by Kon Ichikawa

Fires on the Plain - Criterion Collection
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DVD Cover Information

Actor: Eiji Funakoshi, Mantar? Ushio, Mickey Curtis, Osamu Takizawa, Yoshihiro Hamaguchi
Director: Kon Ichikawa
Brand: IMAGE ENT.
Cinematographer: Setsuo Kobayashi
Cinematographer: Setsuo Shibata
Editor: Tatsuji Nakashizu
Producer: Hiroaki Fujii
Producer: Masaichi Nagata
Writer: Natto Wada
Writer: Shohei Ooka
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: Japanese (Original Language), Dolby Digital 1.0; English (Subtitled)
Format: Black & White, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 2.35:1
Running Time: 108 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2007-03-13
Audience Rating: Unrated
Studio: Criterion
Product features:
  • An agonizing portrait of desperate Japanese soldiers stranded in a strange land during World War II and the lengths they go to survive, Kon Ichikawa's Fires on the Plain is a compelling descent into psychological and physical oblivion. Denied hospital treatment for tuberculosis and cast off into the unknown, Private Tamura treks across an unfamiliar Filipino landscape, encountering an increasi

Movie Reviews of Fires on the Plain - Criterion Collection

Movie Review: Maybe this is too real...
Summary: 5 Stars

Maybe this is `Asia Film Friday' for me (when my last two reviews are posted you'll know what I mean) but I've been thinking about reviewing `Nobi' (better known as `Fires on the Plain') for days now and I'm finally going to do just that. I have mentioned in my last two reviews that I am not a huge fan of Asian cinema, especially not those released pre-1990, but `Nobi' is one of those rare exceptions to the rule. In fact, `Nobi' is one of the greatest war (anti-war) films I've ever seen.

Mesmerizing, gritty, raw, realistic and heartbreaking; `Nobi' is the exact opposite of the over-stylized and chaotic unrealism that I often find in Asian cinema.

In Kon Ichikawa's harrowing film we are introduced to Tamura, a sickly soldier who is abandoned by his peers and ordered to commit suicide if he is unable to find medical help. In a true act of selfish inhumanity, he is rejected by everyone. Left desolate and dying of starvation, Tamura hangs on to his last shred of dignity, wandering aimlessly through jungle trying to stay alive. He encounters many obstacles along the way, but his biggest adversary is the war itself, and what it does to the mind.

Not just his mind, but the minds of those around him.

This is a truly stunning film, from top to bottom completely revelatory in its stark realism and abrasive honesty. It is one of the first films to admit some of the atrocities that took place across enemy lines and it brilliantly depicts the mood that sets in when war tears apart the lives of those deeply entrenched in it. I recently reviewed the beautiful `The Cranes are Flying', another film that contemplates the effect war has on our lives. That film mainly focused on `the ones left behind', while this film puts us in the middle of the action so-to-speak, helping us understand (if you can call it that) what this process does to the men and women subjected to it on a daily basis.

Less ambiguous than `The Cranes are Flying', which more or less allowed you to draw your own conclusion as to your feelings on war, `Nobi' is a direct assault on the concept of warfare, drilling into our minds with its blatant realism that war is detrimental, destructive and unnecessary.

That may not be something you want to hear, but Ichikawa is going to tell you anyways.

Unlike modern films like `Saving Private Ryan' that glamorize our soldiers and their duties (they are heroes), `Nobi' throws that notion out the window by portraying warfare as a disease that corrodes good men and turns us all into selfish people. This may be an extremist point of view (I am not paying an disrespect to our men overseas, so please don't take this review as that) but it is a legitimate and needed counterbalance to the films that tend to shy away from controversy by stripping their characters of the possibility of this very human tendency. If the average human being, when pressed against a wall by apparent oppression, can turn on a friend or even a relative in an act of desperation to save his own skin, how much more so when thrust into a situation as grotesque as war.

I accredit `Platoon' as a modern film (80's, but whatever) that entertained this very notion appropriately.

Regardless of your political or emotional take on war in general, `Nobi' is a marvelous cinematic experience and one you really should take the time to see. It may push your buttons (if you are a supporter of war) but I think that even those who are `proud of their men in arms' can appreciate that the general idea of war is something that should never have entered anyone's mind.
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Summary of Fires on the Plain - Criterion Collection

An agonizing portrait of desperate Japanese soldiers stranded in a strange land during World War II and the lengths they go to survive, Kon Ichikawa's Fires on the Plain is a compelling descent into psychological and physical oblivion. Denied hospital treatment for tuberculosis and cast off into the unknown, Private Tamura treks across an unfamiliar Filipino landscape, encountering an increasingly debased cross-section of Imperial Army soldiers. Grisly yet poetic, Fires on the Plain is one of the most powerful works from one of Japanese cinema's most versatile filmmakers.
Timeless and unforgettable, Kon Ichikawa's Fires on the Plain ranks highly among the most potent anti-war films ever made. Freely adapted from the 1952 novel by Shohei Ooka and set on the Japanese-occupied Philippine island of Leyte in February of 1945, the film presents a horrific landscape that instantly conveys the nightmarish conditions that existed during the final days of World War II. With a ghostly pallor, sunken eyes, and a case of tuberculosis that has isolated him from his fellow soldiers, the ragged and desperately hungry Tamura (Eiji Funakoshi) has orders to kill himself with a single grenade if he can't find medical attention at a nearby field hospital. Instead he wanders among stinking corpses, through abandoned villages where feral dogs pounce out of nowhere, and eventually encounters two skeletal comrades who are equally desperate to survive. As each of these men is drawn to an inevitable fate, Ichikawa (in close collaboration with his screenwriter wife Natto Wada) strips away any hint of political ideology, focusing on the physical and emotional devastation of survivors to illustrate, in Ichikawa's words, "a total denial [and a] total negation of war." Nearly 50 years before Clint Eastwood tapped into similar themes in Letters from Iwo Jima, Ichikawa was denouncing war with uncompromising bluntness that included (for the first time in a Japanese film) an acknowledgement that cannibalism occurred amidst other wartime atrocities. (In the film it's an indirect reference, but powerful nonetheless.) The result is a raw and powerful experience that fixes itself in your memory. Criterion's 2007 DVD release includes an informative 2006 video interview with renowned Japanese-film expert Donald Richie, video recollections (from 2005) featuring Ichickawa and actor Mickey Curtis, and a comprehensive booklet essay by film critic Chuck Stephens. --Jeff Shannon

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