Since
my recent viewing of Japanese documentary filmmaker Kazuo Hara’s harrowing
documentary The Emperor’s Naked Army
Marches On which touched upon the concept of cannibalism committed by
Japanese soldiers during WWII, I couldn’t help but think of distinguished
director Kon Ichikawa’s 1959 adaptation of Ooka Shohei’s 1951 Yomiuri Prize
winning novel Fires on the Plain. One of the great literary works of historical
fiction, this tale of horror set near the waning days of WWII concerns Private
Tamura of the Imperial Japanese Army.
After being drafted into and tossed out of his own company over tuberculosis,
Tamura forages for survival amid the boundless Philippine jungles and
forests. Gradually succumbing to
madness, he experiences degradation including but not limited to
cannibalism.
The
subject of an abandoned Japanese army left for dead and forced to cannibalize
one another to sustain what little life remained is one that continues to be
swept under the rug as a taboo topic better left to die than to be
discussed. And yet the story of such a
thing taking place in the military during the Second World War spawned Kazuo
Hara’s documentary as well as two cinematic adaptations of Shohei’s novel Fires on the Plain, one by The Burmese Harp director Kon Ichikawa
and the other by Tetsuo: The Iron Man cult
director Shinya Tsukamoto. In a rare
scenario, Shohei’s ostensibly unfilmable novel has managed to produce two
indelible feature film offerings by two of the Japanese film industry’s most
distinguished auteurs, each finding their own cinematic language and dramatic
footing while staying true to the essence of the text.
The
question becomes less about which film is stronger or more artistically
successful than the other (personally I prefer Ichikawa’s film but consider
both valuable) and more about what each filmmaker’s take brings to or leaves
off the table. Both stories are bleak,
uncompromising descents into delirium coupled with starvation surrounded by
death while shedding light on one of the most unthinkable aspects of wartime
survival. And yet each director’s
audiovisual approach couldn’t be more different in how they assess the
situation at hand, how they stage the scenes of combat and how they deal with
the topic honestly without drifting into overt exploitation. With this, the Movie Sleuth takes a good look
at two directorial stabs at Ooka Shohei’s bleak and horrifying Japanese WWII
novel Fires on the Plain.
Directed by Kon
Ichikawa (1959)
An
ornate and elegantly ugly panorama of postwar pandemonium, the former animator
and Walt Disney disciple and frequent comedy director Kon Ichikawa working with
his screenwriter wife Natto Wada shifted gears to produce and unveil (at the
time) the grisliest, bleakest, most foreboding antiwar film the cinema world
had seen up to that point. Drenched in
filth and despair, Ichikawa’s Fires on
the Plain is a curious, sometimes uncategorizable picture whose grotesque
horrors are offset by the film’s wicked sense of humor. Though the subject is one few (if anyone)
wishes to discuss, Ichikawa’s involvement in the picture invariably infuses it
with his visual panache, his dealings in the comedy genre and above all, his
penchant for provocation and a leaning towards what became known as Japanese
Humanism.
Starring
Gamera actor Eiji Funakoshi in the
central role of Tamura, through voiceover narration we’re drawn into the
troubled character’s headspace of fear, anxiety, starvation and eventually
madness. Co-starring Japanese rock star
Mickey Curtis in his first film appearance onscreen as a fellow soldier who
eventually succumbs to cannibalism, the film follows Tamura throughout the
Philippines and rugged open terrain as he grows more and more emaciated and
unclean with time. The ensemble cast of
supporting character actors are run through the gamut, instructed to eat very
little and refrain from bathing, a move which prompted the installation of
nurses on set. So extreme, however, was
actor Funakoshi’s own willing starvation to prepare for the role that he
collapsed on set and filming stopped for two months until he recovered.
Accentuating
Tamura’s descent into madness is the mixture of surrealism among the
proceedings, such as a brief moment when a dead Japanese soldier lifts his head
up to speak to Tamura. It’s a moment
that predates the now-infamous shot of a severed head counting to ten in Werner
Herzog’s Aguirre, the Wrath of God. Though leading towards its eventual
confrontation with the concept of cannibalism, the film is broken up into
episodic form as a series of unexpected encounters with fellow soldiers and
Filipino residents of the region, furthering the unpredictability of Tamura’s
odyssey through Hell.
While
knee deep in death and destruction, Ichikawa and his cinematographer Setsuo
Kobayashi shoot at a distance in elegantly composed black-and-white Daieiscope
anamorphic widescreen. Take for instance
a wide-angled shot of a war torn hill littered with lifeless bodies taken out
by an ambush. It’s simultaneously
horrific and breathtakingly beautiful, a contradictory juxtaposition Ichikawa
strives for throughout the piece.
Despite being inherently Japanese, Ichikawa wears his Western influences
upon his sleeve in some surprising sight gags such as soldiers changing out
their shoes with that of a deceased soldier, echoing the comic antics of
Charlie Chaplin.
Equally
as important to Ichikawa’s nightmarish adaptation of the waning days of WWII
Japan is a downbeat orchestral score by frequent Ichikawa collaborator Yasushi
Akutagawa. Coming from a background as
both a composer and conductor, Akutagawa studied alongside the great Akira
Ifukube and likewise has turned over a score which fills listeners immediately
with an overwhelming sense of doom. As
integral to the experience as the visuals, Akutagawa’s score works to immerse
you the viewer in Tamura’s mood and frame of mind, one filled with anxiety and
fear. It’s an awful place to see and
hear, one which only grows more despairing with time.
Released
to shocked audiences in 1959, Ichikawa’s adaptation of Fires on the Plain understandably split viewers who had, up to that
time, never seen something so gruesome at the movies. Considered a war film that went far beyond
what anyone ever thought they’d see from the genre, the film was almost
instantly controversial though it did go on to win the 1960 Japanese Blue
Ribbon for Best Director and Best Cinematography and was later picked for the
official Japanese entry for Best Foreign Language Film at the Academy Awards
before being snubbed at the last minute.
Seen
now, the film still has an unparalleled ability to repel viewers and remains a
thoroughly downbeat evocation of the wartime experience, predating the
grotesqueries of modern WWII pictures such as Saving Private Ryan or Hacksaw
Ridge by over fifty years. In
Japanese cinema history, Ichikawa’s Fires
on the Plain stands as an important moment in which filmgoers of East Asia
and Western America were forced to confront the unfathomably horrific realities
of war depicted on the silver screen. Disturbing
and powerfully nihilistic, what’s most striking about Ichikawa’s film is just
how many decades ahead of its time the film really was. No one was making war pictures like this
which made you feel as you gaze upon the screen as if you were slowly dying on
the inside.
--Andrew Kotwicki
Directed by Shinya
Tsukamoto (2014)
Something
of a speed-demon, one-man-show wunderkind and frequently extreme provocateur
actor/director/cinematographer/producer Shinya Tsukamoto first burst onto the
Japanese film scene with his industrial cyberpunk science-fiction/horror
visceral shockfest Tetsuo: The Iron Man. Something of a crossbred hybrid with the
surrealism of David Lynch, the clinical approach to body horror of David
Cronenberg and the sped up energies of Sam Raimi, Tsukamoto is something of a
jack of all trades, frequently acting in film while formulating his own
pictures from the ground up often doing everything by himself.
Up
to this time, the cult filmmaker mostly dabbled in horror or erotic film,
sometimes fusing both disparate elements together though occasionally the
director would work in adaptations of preexisting stories written by
others. The idea of Tsukamoto doing a
war film, let alone a WWII film seemed remote for the filmmaker. But in 2014, not only did Tsukamoto tackle
the war film, he presented yet another cinematic adaptation of Ooka Shohei’s
dark antiwar novel Fires on the Plain. Separated by fifty-five years, the first take
on the material came from distinguished and classy filmmaker Kon Ichikawa who
shot the film in 2.35:1 panoramic widescreen.
Though controversial and disturbing, the film has since attained status
as one of the greatest Japanese films of all time.
Given
the level of violence and gore Tsukamoto often served up in his ultraviolent
and hypersexual Tetsuo series, one
would expect the alignment of Tsukamoto and Fires
on the Plain to be an out and out bloodbath. Upon actually seeing the film, it’s
unquestionably the director’s goriest picture yet, one which pushes the viewer
even deeper into the blood, feces, urine and human flesh soaked landscape
without relent and well past the point of acceptability. Simply put, this is one of the most
thoroughly grotesque war films ever attempted.
Contrary
to Ichikawa’s film which was distant and methodical in its visual manner,
Tsukamoto and his cinematographer Satoshi Hayashi have produced an intimate,
confrontational, often handheld burst of the same manic energy seen on his
English language Tetsuo: The Bullet Man. Often going for close-ups and frenetic camera
movement, Tsukamoto’s take on Fires on
the Plain is far more visceral and hyperkinetic visually than Ichikawa’s
classier widescreen production. The two
auteurs couldn’t have been more different in their approach to the material,
with Ichikawa gazing from afar while Tsukamoto pushes things right in your
face.
Where
the film tends to frustrate, however, is with the late composer Chu Ishikawa’s
electronic score which feels curiously out of place with the proceedings. While his electronica industrial sonics and
metallic scrapings for his Tetsuo: The
Iron Man stand as one of the greatest soundtracks of modern Japanese film,
his score for Fires on the Plain tends
to distract from the immediacy of Tsukamoto’s often obscene imagery. That said, it’s a minor quibble in the scheme
of things as Tsukamoto is naturally superb in the leading role of Tamura. Just a couple years afterward, Tsukamoto
would go for an emaciated role once again in Martin Scorsese’s Silence, a testament to the filmmaker’s
versatility and dedication to his art.
In
keeping with the original, however, Tsukamoto includes the casting of Japanese
musician Tatsuya Nakamura though the cannibalistic acts are left to Shin Godzilla actor Yusaku Mori. Tsukamoto is always good in any role he’s in
and generally has the capacity to lift a film higher than it would have been
without him. Though his Tamura is
considerably older than Eiji Funakoshi, Tsukamoto nonetheless works very well
in the role and conveys the indescribable horror of being confronted with the
prospect of cannibalism. Mostly however,
the real stars of this adaptation are the effects department which serve up so
many gory images of intestines bursting, brains being stepped on, faces being
blown off. Comparatively, this might
actually be an even more gruesome WWII film than Mel Gibson’s Hacksaw Ridge.
Tsukamoto’s
film naturally opened at the 71st Venice Film Festival to mixed
reception. Some were enamored with
Tsukamoto’s out and out bloodbath while others felt the filmmaker lost sight of
the message driving Shohei’s novel in the first place. One thing that is true is unlike the Kon
Ichikawa film, Tsukamoto’s film is far more experiential. Whereas Ichikawa’s antiwar message was loud
and clear, Tsukamoto is somewhat murkier in his aims, instead focusing on what
it felt like to be in Tamura’s shoes.
Also
unlike Ichikawa who found room for black humor amid the proceedings, Tsukamoto
leaves no room for laughter and takes us as far into the inferno as humanly
possible. Not easy viewing or easy to
recommend but as a companion piece to Ichikawa’s film and as an outlier in
Tsukamoto’s otherwise fantastical filmography, it will most certainly cement
itself into your psyche whether you want it to or not.
--Andrew Kotwicki
