Fires on the Plain

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 1945, the film presents a horrific landscape conveying the nightmarish conditions that existed during the final days of World War II. With his ghostly pallor and sunken eyes—symptomatic of the tuberculosis that has isolated him from fellow soldiers—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 and through abandoned villages (home to feral dogs), eventually encountering two emaciated comrades who are equally desperate to survive. 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 the filmmaker'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 (this is the first Japanese film to acknowledge—albeit indirectly—that cannibalism occurred, among other wartime atrocities). Criterion's excellent new DVD release includes an informative 2006 video interview with renowned Japanese-film expert Donald Richie, video recollections (from 2005) with Ichikawa and actor Mickey Curtis, and a booklet featuring a comprehensive essay by film critic Chuck Stephens. Highly recommended. [Note: Ichikawa's 1956 companion war film The Burmese Harp is also newly available from Criterion.] (J. Shannon)