Wednesday, March 14, 2007

Fires on the Plain


In the first shot of "Fires on the Plain," a soldier is slapped in the face by his superior. It is one of the kinder gestures one man will make to another man during the course of the film. Much like Jefferson Airplane´s "White Rabbit" begins on a high notes and ratchets ever higher to its almost impossible crescendo, "Fires on the Plain" begins on this note of human cruelty only to plunge further and further into the depths of abject misery. As a litany of human suffering, the film has few cinematic equivalents: Nelson Pereira dos Santos´ "Vidas Secas" comes close but at least it is alleviated by a few moments of compassion; Pier Paolo Pasolini´s "Salo" may strike closer to home for its sustained sadism without so much as the faintest promise of redemption.

Private Tamura (Eiji Funakoshi) has just returned to his unit after being "cured" of tuberculosis in a mere three day hospital stay. His superior tells him the unit has so no use (and no food) for a man who can´t pull his weight. He is order to return to the hospital where, if he is not admitted, he is then ordered to kill himself. Tamura follows orders though he holds little hope; his pessimism is confirmed when the hospital coordinator informs him: "If you can walk, you´re not a patient." He is permitted to linger outside in the muck with several other similarly "displaced" soldiers with no food besides the few yams he has managed to hold onto. And then things start to go bad.

Surprisingly, director Kon Ichikawa doesn´t use this bleak backdrop to generate sympathy for Tamura or any other Japanese soldier. The film is set on the Philippine front in 1945 when the war is all but over. Though largely unspoken in the film, the specter of Japanese brutality against the Filipinos looms over the film. The only overt nod to this atrocity is one scene when a frightened Tamura callously guns down a female villager, and tries to kill her fleeing husband (or perhaps brother) simply to cover up his crime. For obvious reasons, the locals have no sympathy for the Japanese suffering, and the soldiers are too absorbed in their own misery to help each other out.

Japanese corpses litter the landscape, providing not just a dismal visual spectacle but also hinting at the film´s most grotesque manifestation of human abjection: cannibalism. At first, the mention of the ultimate taboo appears as a joke. One soldier teases Tamura that his company ate human flesh on their previous campaign; in another scene, a dying soldier holds up his arm and suggests to Tamura that it will soon be his next snack. The joke turns deadly serious later on. In the film´s final sequence, Tamura is terrified to let his guard down with two of his fellow soldiers for fear that he´ll wind up on the menu as "monkey meat."

chikawa based the film on a book by Shohei Ooka, and the story was already fairly well-known at the time the movie was released. It seems incredible that a film acknowledging a military failure so complete that its soldiers resorted to cannibalism could be made, let alone be a success, but Ichikawa experienced little resistance in making "Fires on the Plain." It´s difficult to imagine an American equivalent today: even the numerous films critical of American involvement in Vietnam don't go nearly as far as "Fires."

"Fires on the Plain" may or may not have surprised audiences in 1959, but it sure as hell seems shocking today, nearly fifty years later. Plenty of films have played on the "war is hell" motif, but I can´t think of any that have taken it to such infernal extremes. Ichikawa does not alloy his bleak vision with any hint of heroism or honorable sacrifice; the war is shown as stupid, ugly, pointless, and utterly devastating. "Saving Private Ryan" is a Disney ride next to Ichikawa´s bleak vision; even Sam Fuller´s pitch black "The Big Red One" seems positively optimistic by comparison. A few odd notes of black humor only underscore the grotesquerie. "Fires on the Plain" is stern stuff indeed.

In the first shot of "Fires on the Plain," a soldier is slapped in the face by his superior. It is one of the kinder gestures one man will make to another man during the course of the film. Much like Jefferson Airplane´s "White Rabbit" begins on a high notes and ratchets ever higher to its almost impossible crescendo, "Fires on the Plain" begins on this note of human cruelty only to plunge further and further into the depths of abject misery. As a litany of human suffering, the film has few cinematic equivalents: Nelson Pereira dos Santos´ "Vidas Secas" comes close but at least it is alleviated by a few moments of compassion; Pier Paolo Pasolini´s "Salo" may strike closer to home for its sustained sadism without so much as the faintest promise of redemption.

Private Tamura (Eiji Funakoshi) has just returned to his unit after being "cured" of tuberculosis in a mere three day hospital stay. His superior tells him the unit has so no use (and no food) for a man who can´t pull his weight. He is order to return to the hospital where, if he is not admitted, he is then ordered to kill himself. Tamura follows orders though he holds little hope; his pessimism is confirmed when the hospital coordinator informs him: "If you can walk, you´re not a patient." He is permitted to linger outside in the muck with several other similarly "displaced" soldiers with no food besides the few yams he has managed to hold onto. And then things start to go bad.

Surprisingly, director Kon Ichikawa doesn´t use this bleak backdrop to generate sympathy for Tamura or any other Japanese soldier. The film is set on the Philippine front in 1945 when the war is all but over. Though largely unspoken in the film, the specter of Japanese brutality against the Filipinos looms over the film. The only overt nod to this atrocity is one scene when a frightened Tamura callously guns down a female villager, and tries to kill her fleeing husband (or perhaps brother) simply to cover up his crime. For obvious reasons, the locals have no sympathy for the Japanese suffering, and the soldiers are too absorbed in their own misery to help each other out.

Japanese corpses litter the landscape, providing not just a dismal visual spectacle but also hinting at the film´s most grotesque manifestation of human abjection: cannibalism. At first, the mention of the ultimate taboo appears as a joke. One soldier teases Tamura that his company ate human flesh on their previous campaign; in another scene, a dying soldier holds up his arm and suggests to Tamura that it will soon be his next snack. The joke turns deadly serious later on. In the film´s final sequence, Tamura is terrified to let his guard down with two of his fellow soldiers for fear that he´ll wind up on the menu as "monkey meat."

chikawa based the film on a book by Shohei Ooka, and the story was already fairly well-known at the time the movie was released. It seems incredible that a film acknowledging a military failure so complete that its soldiers resorted to cannibalism could be made, let alone be a success, but Ichikawa experienced little resistance in making "Fires on the Plain." It´s difficult to imagine an American equivalent today: even the numerous films critical of American involvement in Vietnam don't go nearly as far as "Fires."

"Fires on the Plain" may or may not have surprised audiences in 1959, but it sure as hell seems shocking today, nearly fifty years later. Plenty of films have played on the "war is hell" motif, but I can´t think of any that have taken it to such infernal extremes. Ichikawa does not alloy his bleak vision with any hint of heroism or honorable sacrifice; the war is shown as stupid, ugly, pointless, and utterly devastating. "Saving Private Ryan" is a Disney ride next to Ichikawa´s bleak vision; even Sam Fuller´s pitch black "The Big Red One" seems positively optimistic by comparison. A few odd notes of black humor only underscore the grotesquerie. "Fires on the Plain" is stern stuff indeed.

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