Watch Fires on the Plain - Criterion Collection Online
Mardi, avril 13th, 2010 |
Watch Fires on the Plain - Criterion Collection Online.
Movie Title: Fires on the Plain - Criterion Collection Fires on the Plain - Criterion Collection is available for streaming or downloading. Click Here to Stream or Download Fires on the Plain - Criterion Collection |
This is a film about man in extremis. Retreating, defeated batallions of Japanese soldiers in WWII on the island of Leyte in the Phillipines find themselves sinking ineluctably toward barbarism. The wounded, the desperate, the starving–all are paraded before us in Ichikawa’s pitiless, sometimes bitterly ironic pageant of man’s descent toward his basest impulses. The fires of the plain of the title refer to distant smoke from fires on the horizon that the soldiers see from time to time. The fires are symbols of hope of release from the carnage and despair surrounding the soldiers. The final irony is how fraudulent too this hope turns out to be. All are caught in the web of deceit, of trickery, of brutality that man in his primitive state so easily reverts to. Just about every sacred cow–brotherhood, respect, honor–is refuted. Man is both a figurative and literal cannibal, preying on his fellow soldiers, his friends. The film is harshly realistic yet surreal and nightmarish–barren landscapes of corpses, dung-eating madmen, men crawling like beasts over a trench. Ichikawa’s images have a barbaric splendor and dreamlike aura, reinforced by the dissonant, percussive soundtrack with its echoes of Bartok. Not a film for those unwilling to face the extent of man’s capacity for monstrosity head on; for others, it’s a harrowing, deeply unsettling experience.
Over 25 years ago, I was watching a Public TV station on a Saturday afternnon in Milwaukke. They were showing a movie called “Fires on the Plain” and I watched it more out of curiosity than intent. Although the picture on my screen was fuzzy, I gradually became mesmerized as I understood what the movie was all about. The film haunted to where I bought and read the book (by the same title) by Shohei Ooka and later his worthwhile book “The Shade of Blossoms”. I finally had the chance to see the movie again on IFC and was as impressed as I was the first time. It was a clear picture this time with subtitles.
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“Fires on the Plain” tells the story of Tamura, a Japanese soldier in the Philipines in February, 1945; a time when defeat was turning into chaos. We witness the gradual metamorphis from civilized soldier to desperate animal as Tamura searches for a path to hope. It is a disturbing film but it is an educational film as well because of the way it allows us to examine the other side of victory.
I have always been curious about the demise of the defeated sides in WWII. Both fought well past the point of no return and suffered through incredible destruction until only a skeleton of its’ empire remained to surrender. What must that have been like to experience? I have read books by Heinrich Boll that have given me something of an idea and other authors have as well. I recently finished an excellent book entitled “Japan at War: An Oral History”. The eyewitness accounts of the disintegrating forces in the Philipines and other places fit the descriptions show in “Fires on the Plain”. It is a disturbing portrait of a world of near-anarchy where survival is about the only instinct remaining. Truth IS stranger than fiction.
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