The Greatest Films #10: Grave of the Fireflies

Watch this movie in subtitles, always get the original performance.

Background:

Like most of my favorite Japanese films I came across Grave of the Fireflies through my Japanese cinema course in college. I was hoping to get in an easy class that I could sleep through and focus more on my own movies.

It ended up being the most fulfulling class I’d ever taken in school. Most people followed my plan and never showed up for screenings, but they missed out on greats like, Late Spring, Sansho the Baliff, Double Suicide, Ikiru, Harakiri, and, of course, Grave of the Fireflies.

You’ll likely never see a movie so heartbreaking. It pulls no punches in its execution and allows no escape from tragedy. Shindler’s List is light affair in comparison. It wiggles through all our built-in defenses and penetrates deep into our most primal human desire: To protect children. Yes, more awful tragedies have affected children, but never have the factilies of animation, design, performance, atmosphere, and storytelling, been employed for such a emotionally devastating film experience.

The cute factor.

What it is about:

In one of the greater human injustices in human history Americans would incendiary bomb cities filled with innocent women, children, and men. Japan, made up primary of wooden buildings, was set ablaze. Huge portions of the population were wiped out. What would have become a war crime or topic for debate quickly took backseat to the more shocking and audacious decision to drop the atom bomb not once, but twice.

I remember vividly Robert McNamara, in the great documentary The Fog of War, saying his commanding officers were worried that if they lost the war they’d be tried as war criminals for the fire bombings. Wherever you come down, and it must be that firebombing was wrong, this movie will convert you. It is a simple story of two children orphaned by the war and who struggle to survive in Kobe, Japan.

The haunting final shot of the film.

Why it is a great film:

One of the most profound human stories of all time just happens to be an animated movie. The movie is adapted from the book by Akiyuki Nosaka and there are live-adaptations, but Grave remains one of the great movies of all time. Why?

Well, first off it was produced by undeniably the greatest anime studio in filmmaking history, Studio Ghlibl.

Second, animation frees it from the “wow” factor of the special effects. If Spielberg, a great director, were to make the movie it would feature spectactular sequences of action and pleasurable visuals. The movie thankfully side-steps this issue by making the cartoon effects unremarkable and functional.

Lastly, I think it works because Anime has the innate “cute factor” or kawaisa. Setsuko seems all the more innocent and human, therefore, making the enemies all the more dangerous and vile.

The great tragedy of the movie, and a piece of information you should knowing going in, is that it is true story about Akiyuki Nosaka. His character obviously dies in the first moment of the movie, but a more heart-tugging realization is that his death is only figurative. He was never able to forgive himself for what happened. The final shot of the film is profound in its meaning, as well as being transparent in its theme: These things still haunt modern Japan, as well as the rest of us.

-Collin