I had the amazing experience of watching Fires on the Plain in the beautiful Castro Theatre in San Francisco with only maybe… five to ten others in the audience. I wept with such a gut-wrenching feeling. Beautifully shot.. so much devastating, dynamic texture in sound and visuals. The dirty explosions are forceful, sense of isolation from the landscapes horrifying and alienating.

Fires on the Plain shows a brilliant display of cinematic rhythm created with beautifully composed landscapes, escalating horrors and even including awkward physical “humour” of silent films and even old Ub Iwerks Silly Symphony cartoons.

Tamura to me is one of the most amazing characters in movies. He is almost like the idiot savant of Sufi stories, Nasruddin, in his stubborn natural dawdling innocence even in the midst of the most volatile situations.

Unlike most war films Ichikawa’s takes us far beyond the outline or midst of written textbook history and into a deathscape of the completely forsaken underbelly of the battlefield. Much credit must go to Ichikawa’s wife, Natto Wada for her beautifully detailed humanistic screenplays. Watch this and then follow it with Ichikawa’s “The Burmese Harp.”