Fires on the Plain (1959)

The only movie I'd previously seen directed (not associate-directed) by Kon Ichikawa was The Burmese Harp. As war flicks go, it's pretty gentle. This one notoriously isn't.

We can tell from the very first scene that there won't be a happy ending: The protagonist, WWII Private Tamura (Eiji Funakoshi), has TB, but the only accessible hospital on the Philippine island of Leyte is too full to take anyone who can still walk. Nor is he welcome back at his company in this condition. An officer orders him to grenade himself if he can't get treatment, but when he comes to that bridge, he decides to wander instead. Alas, by the end, he may wish he'd followed the order.

I can't say I feel sorrier for Tamura than for most of the other characters. The Japanese are clearly losing the Battle of Leyte, and many are in arguably worse shape. We never see any of them engaging the enemy proper; they're too busy struggling to survive and keep their wits. Indeed, TB is almost a blessing in disguise, as it may be the only reason nobody eats Tamura.

Yup, it gets gruesome, particularly in dialog. In an era when Hollywood couldn't even mention tamer details like pants wetting, Ichikawa was pulling out more or less all the stops. I guess I should give Tamura credit for not sinking to the same moral lows as other major characters, but he does do some shameful things, swiping a comrade's boots immediately after death being the least of them. Much of the time, he just seems kind of dim, as if unsure whether this is reality.

The U.S. soldiers aren't exactly vilified. Sure, somebody bombed the field hospital, but the few times we actually see GIs, they're behaving decently enough to explain why some Japanese plan to become POWs. The armed Filipinos, meanwhile, do not accept surrenders.

Once in a while, we hear Tamura's present-tense narration, which sounds more lucid than his sparse speech. That helps add a certain poetry to the otherwise stark, terribly realistic landscape. (How realistic? The actors didn't eat much, brush their teeth, or clip their nails, and Funakoshi's fainting delayed shooting for months.)

You may think me unwise to have seen this right after another unsparing war depiction, but I think my timing helped. It's easier to take FotP when you already have the mindset prepared for it. I highly admire it but must caution future viewers about their own timing.