Fires on the Plain (film)

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Fires on the Plain
Directed by	Kon Ichikawa
Produced by	Masaichi Nagata
Written by	Natto Wada Shohei Ooka (novel)
Narrated by	Eiji Funakoshi
Starring	Eiji Funakoshi Osamu Takizawa Mickey Curtis
Music by	Yasushi Akutagawa
Cinematography	Setsuo Kobayashi
Editing by	Tatsuji Nakashizu
Distributed by	Daiei
Release date(s)	November 3, 1959
Running time	104 min
Country	Japan
Language	Japanese
Allmovie profile
IMDb profile

Fires on the Plain (野火, Nobi^?) is a 1959 Japanese war film directed by Kon Ichikawa. The screenplay, written by the director's wife, Natto Wada, is based on the novel Nobi (Tokyo 1951) by Shohei Ooka, translated by Ivan Morris as Fires on the Plain (New York: A.A. Knopf, 1957).

Though it initially received mixed reviews from both Japanese and foreign critics (mostly concerning the violence),^[1][2] it is now generally well regarded.^[3]

Fires on the Plain became part of the Criterion Collection on March 13, 2007.^[4]

Contents 1 Plot 2 Cast 3 Production 4 Distribution 5 Reception 5.1 Awards 6 References 6.1 Notes 6.2 Bibliography 7 External links

[edit] Plot

The setting is the island of Leyte in the Philippines, in the winter of 1945, as Allied Forces cut the Japanese off from support. The Imperial Japanese army, with barely any weapons or ammunition, has been told to fight to the death or commit suicide. Private Tamura, who is sick with tuberculosis has been told to commit suicide if unable to get help from a field hospital. When he arrives he is told they only take in people who are about to die. Outside the hospital, he finds a group of wandering Japanese soldiers who have met similar fates. He sticks with this group until an artillery barrage destroys the hospital, and forces the group to scatter. Malnourished and sick, he tries to find his way across a devastated landscape, killing only by accident, avoiding death only by chance.

Tamura comes across a group of other soldiers headed to the town of Palampon from where it is rumored they will be evacuated. Among this group is Nagamatsu and Yasuda who are doing their best to sell tobacco for food or money. He befriends Nagamatsu, while other soldiers are preparing for nightfall, when they will travel to Palampon. In an attempt to cross a heavily traveled road at night, tanks come and the survivors are forced to retreat. In the morning, the Red Cross arrives and Tamura plans to surrender but watches as a Filipina guerilla soldier in an American jeep guns down survivors of the attack.

Private Tamura again begins wandering. Delirious with hunger, he comes across his comrades Nagamatsu and Yasuda, who claim to have survived on "monkey meat." Later Nagamatsu is out hunting "monkeys" again and Yasuda steals Tamura's grenade. When Nagamatsu almost shoots Tamura, he knows what monkey meat really is. Nagamatsu pleads with Tamura, saying that they would be dead if they didn't eat it. Tamura leaves and finds Nagamatsu returning. When Nagamatsu hears that Tamura's grenade got stolen, Nagamatsu says they need to kill Yasuda, or he will kill them with the grenade. Nagamatsu pretends to search for Yasuda, then when he hears him coming he hides near a hill and shoots Yasuda. Nagamatsu begins cutting Yasuda up, Tamura becomes disgusted and shoots Nagamatsu. Tamura then deliriously heads towards the "fires on the plain," which are frequently commented on by characters throughout the film, trying to find someone "who is leading a normal life." He is shot by the farmers who have been fanning the fires to re-fertilize the fields, and falls, apparently dead.

[edit] Cast

Actor	Role
Eiji Funakoshi	Pfc. Tamura
Osamu Takizawa	Pvt. Yasuda
Mickey Curtis	Pvt. Nagamatsu
Mantarô Ushio	Sergeant
Kyu Sazanaka	Army surgeon
Yoshihiro Hamaguchi	Officer
Asao Sano	Soldier
Masaya Tsukida	Soldier
Hikaru Hoshi	Soldier

[edit] Production

Kon Ichikawa stated in a Criterion Collection interview that he had witnessed the destruction of the atom bomb first hand, and had felt since then that he had to speak out against the horrors of war, despite the many comedies that made up most of his early career.^[5] Fires on the Plain got greenlighted by the studio Kadokawa Herald Pictures because they thought it would be an action movie. Ichikawa decided that it was a film that needed to be made in black and white, specifically requesting Eastman's black and white. Ichikawa also said that he had wanted actor Eiji Funakoshi to be in the film from the beginning.^[6] Kon Ichikawa's wife, Natto Wada, penned the script which got the blessing of Shohei Ooka.^[7]

The film was shot completely in Japan in Gotenba, Izu and Hakone. The actors were fed little and couldn't go to brush their teeth or cut their nails to make it look more realistic, but doctors were on set constantly. It was delayed for two months when actor Eiji Funakoshi fainted on set.^[8] Ichikawa asked Eiji Funakoshi's wife what had happened and she responded that he had barely eaten in the two months that he was given to prepare.^[9]

Mickey Curtis said, also in a Criterion Collection interview that he did not think he was a good actor (himself), but Kon Ichikawa said he just needed to act naturally.^[10]

Ichikawa expressed that the narrator (Tamura) couldn't be a cannibal because then he would have crossed the ultimate low. Ichikawa consulted with his wife (Natto Wada, also the screenwriter for Fires on the Plain), and they decided against having him eat human flesh. As a result, Tamura never eats any of the human meat in the film because his teeth were falling out.^[11]

[edit] Distribution

It was released on June 6, 2000 for Homevision tape.^[12] Then it was released as part of the Criterion Collection in March 13,^[13] 2007.^[14]

[edit] Reception

Critics have appreciated the film's stark but beautiful cinematography and bleak tone, seeing in the film a condemnation of war. Some wondered if Ichikawa intended a message of redemption, although others point out that the film omits much of the Christian imagery of the novel.^[15] One critic suggests that "only when Tamura finds acceptance, rather than expecting the world to conform to his Confucian expectations, does he finally find peace (and death), as he realizes that he cannot live in the world."^[16]

In its early release in the United States, many American critics dismissed Fires on the Plain as a gratuitously bleak anti-war film.^[17] In 1963, New York Times film critic Bosley Crowther gave the film a quite harsh description, writing "Never have I seen a more grisly and physically repulsive film than 'Fires on the Plain.'" He continued, "So purposefully putrid is it, so full of degradation and death... that I doubt if anyone can sit through it without becoming a little bit ill... That's how horrible it is." He notes however, "this is a tribute to its maker, for it is perfectly obvious to me that Kon Ichikawa, the director, intended it to be a brutally realistic contemplation of one aspect of war." He points out, "...with all the horror in it, there are snatches of poetry, too..." He ends the review commenting that the only audience who would enjoy the film were those with bitter memories towards the Japanese held over from World War Two.^[18]

A 1961 Variety review also cautioned that the films bleakness made it a difficult film to promote to audiences, commenting that it "goes much farther than the accepted war masterpieces in detailing for humanity in crisis." Variety's review is more positive than the New York Times, calling it, "one of the most searing pacifistic comments on war yet made... it is a bone hard, forthright film. It is thus a difficult vehicle but one that should find its place."^[19]

Audie Bock points out that in the novel the narrator is in Japan with a Christian view of life, while the film ends with Tamura walking, hands up into gunfire.^[20] When first shown in London, critics complained about this changed ending. By ending with the hero in a hospital meditating on the past, the novel implied a faith in man and the possibility of progress. However Ichikawa's film rejects faith. Tamura puts his faith in man by walking towards the villagers, and he is shot. The individual Tamura may be purified at the end of the film, but the world and mankind are not.^[21]

Ichikawa has been called a cinematic entomologist because he "studies, dissects and manipulates" his human characters. Max Tessier calls Fires on the Plain the summit of this tendency in Ichikawa's work, and "one of the blackest films ever made." Tessier continues that by criticizing the loss of humanity which war causes, the film remains humanist.^[22] James Quandt calls Ichikawa a materialist, noting that he represents abstract concepts in simple objects. In Fires on the Plain, life and death are carried by Tamura in the objects of salt and a grenade respectively.^[23]

Asked about the controversial change in ending, in which the narrator apparently dies rather than survive, Ichikawa replied, "I let him die... I thought he should rest peacefully in the world of death. The death was my salvation for him."^[24] Further, the main character in the film does not have the Christian outlook that narrator of the novel has. Ichikawa explained, "...it somehow didn't seem plausible to show a Japanese soldier saying 'Amen'."^[25]

The black humor employed by Ichikawa has also often been the subject of comment. It has been claimed that Eiji Funakoshi was fundamentally a comic actor.^[26] The noted Japanese film critic Tadao Sato points out that Funakoshi does not play his role in Fires on the Plain in the usual style of post-WWII anti-war Japanese films. He does not put on the pained facial expression and the strained walk typical of the genre, but instead staggers confused through the film more like a drunk man. Sato says that this gives the film its black-comic style which results from watching a man trying to maintain his human dignity in a situation which makes this impossible.^[27] Quandt notes that Ichikawa's wife, Natto Wada, wrote the script to the film and contributed this sardonic wit.^[28] Audie Bock says that this black humor, rather than relieving the bleakness of the film, has the effect of actually heightening the darkness.^[20]

Dave Kehr of the Chicago Reader said: "No other film on the horrors of war has gone anywhere near as far as Kon Ichikawa's 1959 Japanese feature."^[29] John Monogahn of the Detroit Free Press compared it to Clint Eastwood's Letters from Iwo Jima.^[30] The film is not without criticism however, and many Japanese critics dislike his work. ^[31]

In response to the recent Criterion collection release, Jamie S. Rich of DVD Talk Review, had the following to say about it: "I wouldn't call Kon Ichikawa's Fires on the Plain – Criterion Collection an anti-war film so much as I'd call it a realist's war film. Rather than build his story around big explosions and the thrill of battle, Ichikawa instead brings the human drama front and center, directing his spotlight on a soldier who is left to his own devices when the guns stop blazing. He poses the question, 'When stranded on the bombed-out landscape after the fighting has calmed, what will those left behind do to survive?' It's bleak and it's chilling, and yet Fires on the Plain is also completely engrossing. It's the post-action picture as morality play, the journey of the individual recast with Dante-esque overtones. Ichikawa doesn't have to hit you over the head with a message because the story is so truthfully crafted, to state the message outright would be redundant. Once you've see Fires on the Plain, the movie will get under your skin, and you'll find it impossible to forget."^[32]

Chuck Stephens, a film critic, in his essay Both Ends Burning for the Criterion Collection release of Fires on the Plain said the following about Ichikawa: "At once a consummate professional and commercially successful studio team player and an idiosyncratic artist whose bravest films-often displaying a thoroughly odd obsession (to borrow the title of one of his most brilliantly sardonic black comedies) with fusing the brightest and bleakest aspects of human nature-were passionately personal (if not political or polemical) prefigurations of the Japanese new wave, has always had a gift for crystallizing contradition." He insists that Fires on the Plain is an example.^[33]

[edit] Awards

In 1960, the film won the Blue Ribbon Awards for Best Director and Best Cinematography, the Kinema Junpo Awards for Best Screenplay and Best Actor (Eiji Funakoshi) and the Mainichi Film Concours for Best Actor (Eiji Funakoshi), all three in Tokyo. In 1961 it also won the Golden Sail at the Locarno International Film Festival.^[34]

[edit] References

[edit] Notes

[edit] Bibliography

• Hauser, William B. (2001). "Fires on the Plain: The Human Cost of the Pacific War", in Quandt, James (ed.): Kon Ichikawa, Cinematheque Ontario Monographs. Toronto: Cinematheque Ontario, pp. 205-216. ISBN 0-9682969-3-9. 

[edit] External links

• Fires on the Plain at the Internet Movie Database
• Fires on the Plain(Japanese) at the Japanese Movie Database

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