Fukasaku's best film
Under the Flag of the Rising Sun (1972)
Japan, 1971; A war widow, Sakie, tries to uncover the truth surrounding her husbands death in New Guinea during the last days of WW2. The official records say he was executed for desertion but the records can't be trusted. Sakie meets four men who were with her husband when he died but each gives a differing account of his death. When the truth finally emerges it removes any hope that he can be remembered with honor.
Forget Battle Royale or his Yakuza flicks because this is by far Kinji Fukasaku's best film (or at least the best film of his that I've seen). A frank, fascinating look at Japan's post-war amnesia & the horrors suffered by the Japanese troops in New Guinea, Under the Flag of the Rising Sun elevates itself above the morally dubious status of victim movie by showing Japanese soldiers fighting back against crazed officers & casting a critical eye over a postwar Japan that at every level prefers to forget, leaving the survivors & relatives of those lost adrift with memories that can neither be forgotten nor healed. Other events such as the brutal execution of an American POW & the flight into the jungle which led to starvation & cannibalism for thousands of Japanese are graphically portrayed.
The bulk of UTFOTRS is set in the present day as Sakie visits four witnesses to hear their stories. Three of them make clear they feel their lives to have ended on the battlefield, their postwar existence merely 'the dregs', as one character puts it. One man haunted by his war experiences lives on a rubbish tip as the new industrial Japan rises around him. It's the perfect visual metaphor for individuals who can't forget whilst around them is a society that can't forget fast enough. Another survivor, a teacher, tells Sakie his only reason for living is to get his pupils to understand the horrors of war & condemns the bureaucrats - 'They have no integrity' - who refuse to admit their records could be wrong even though her husbands comrades have spoken out about their unreliability.
After a welter of conflicting testimony that has Sakie's husband painted as, variously, a patriotic war hero, a common thief, a mutineer, murderer & - in what is arguably the film's most horrific moment - a cannibal, the truth finally emerges & with it a blunt indictment of the Emperor himself for Japan's wartime suffering. There's a terrible irony here since Sakie's whole reason for clearing her husbands name is her hope that he can finally join the list of war dead officially mourned by Japan's Emperor. Remembering any of the dead with honor under such circumstances now seems impossible. A fat cat war criminal who ordered her husbands execution tells Sakie that remembering the past is akin to powerlessness. The final scene of a forlorn Sakie wondering aimlessly through the crowd is devastating.
Although this is a low budget film Fukasaku mixes archive photographs, staged combat footage, voiceovers, freeze frames, tilted camera angles, archive footage of the Emperor & b/w & colour footage to extremely impressive effect. You might think this mix of styles would distance the film from the viewer, give it more of a documentary feel, but it actually works fantastically well thanks to two things in particular - a script that never ignores the emotional core of the story (scenes of Sakie & her husband making love before his departure, of her weeping uncontrollably in private at his leaving & then flinging herself into the sea at the news of his death, are tremendously powerful) & a great performance by Sachiko Hidari as the grieving widow who, even 25 years on, can't forget her man. As her husband Katsuo, Tetsuro Tamba is also excellent & handles the differing portrayals of his character superbly.
So forget those Japanese war movies that invite you to sympathise with a standard 'war-is-hell, let's all be pacifists' message. This movie has the balls, the moral courage, to go beyond that, criticising it's leaders & it's society while evoking tremendous compassion for the families of those who suffered as a result. As Sakie remarks, 'The Government didn't ask anybody's permission to go to war, but we're the ones stuck paying for all of it.'
The R1 DVD has an excellent anamorphic transfer, a video essay & a commentary by subtitler Linda Hoaglund. Hoaglund's comments are actually interesting because she interviewed Fukasaku about the movie & often quotes directly from him. Amongst other anecdotes we learn that the author of the book on which the film was based objected to Fukasaku's addition of Japanese soldiers murdering a superior officer in self-defence. Fukasaku's response was that he did not want to make another 'victim' movie. Explaining his reasons for making the film Hoaglund mentions Fukasaku's wartime experiences on the end of American bombing raids & how afterwards he'd collect the severed limbs of the victims. This was the point, Fukasaku says, at which he knew that everything he'd been taught about Japan invading other countries in the interest of peace was a pack of lies. Depressingly, Hoaglund thinks that such a condemnation of the Emperor as contained in UTFOTRS would not get made in todays Japan.
Mai Yamane! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mD83P-vn5JI&feature=related