Fires on the Plain 4K 1959

Paradoxically, this dark and brutal war drama hit the world's screens almost simultaneously with Grigory Chukhray's equally famous Soviet film about the young and noble-hearted soldier Alyosha Skvortsov.

But how different these works are! Some scenes in the Japanese film are still shocking today, and in the late 1950s, the unsparing realism of Fires on the Plain seemed truly revolutionary. I can say with confidence that at that time, no one in European cinema, let alone Hollywood, depicted war and its consequences so realistically.

There is practically no plot in the film in the usual sense. Most of it is taken up by the senseless wanderings through the jungle of Japanese soldiers who have been surrounded and abandoned to their fate by their commanders, with little choice but to surrender to the Americans or die of starvation.

Tamura, a soldier who seems a bit slow (the effects of a past illness are evident), joins a handful of other unfortunates who are unsuccessfully trying to make their way back to “their own.” Their efforts to cross the front line, find food or a substitute for it, take up most of the screen time.

It is characteristic that Kon Itikawa does not seek to assign blame—he simply records a chain of horrific events that lead to the total dehumanization and brutalization of once normal, ordinary people. But this is not speculation on the theme of war, created to titillate the audience (Itikava proved this in his previous film, the philosophical, humanistic parable The Burmese Harp, which also takes place during World War II).

In the end, the hero of the film finds the strength, despite inhuman circumstances, to remain human, not to cross the threshold that separates us from animals, from non-humans.