ōoka Shōhei, one of post-war Japanese literature’s greatest, had been called up to serve in ‘44, on the Philippines. What he describes in his 1951 masterpiece, Nobi, he knew –some of the unspeakable deeds too many soldiers committed during the final weeks of Imperial Japan (most merely to stay alive, some simply because they could) he had seen, maybe done himself, some he only heard about in a POW camp. Just like Ichikawa Kon before in 1959, Tsukamoto stays surprisingly true to the novel’s essence, if in a very different register: Nobi 2014 is a poisoned pastoral where bodies rot, limbs fly low, men get mowed down en masse and comrades turn dinner in the blink of an eye; as well as a painting of Buddhist hell in garish colors laid on with deft and broad brush strokes; as well as a gnarling Surrealist satire on human foible delivered in campy tones, shrill and grating. For all its gore and outrage, Fires on the Plain is above all a very wise essay on the human condition. OM
Section: PanoramaD, G, E, P: Shinya Tsukamoto
F: Shinya Tsukamoto, Satoshi Hayashi
S: Masaya Kitada
M: Chu Ishikawa
CP: Kaijyu Theater
Shinya Tsukamoto, Lily Franky, Tatsuya Nakamura, Yusaku Mori, Yuko Nakamura
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He was born in Tokyo, Japan, in 1960. Some of his films are: Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989), Hiruko the Goblin (1991), Tetsuo II: Body Hammer (1992), Tokyo Fist (1995), Bullet Ballet (1998), A Snake of June (2002), Nightmare Detective (2006; Bafici ‘07), Tetsuo: The Bullet Man (2009) and Kotoko (2011).
05 May 2015
25 April 2015
25 April 2015
