Shinya Tsukamoto's film 'Fires on the Plain' to remind Japan of war's horror
Director's message to the modern-day nationis to remember the lessons of the horrors of battle and not make the same mistakes again
Featuring cannibalism, maggots devouring rotting flesh and one soldier's desperate bid to cling to humanity in the chaos, Japanese war film Fires on the Plain has both thrilled and shocked at the Venice film festival.
Yet the latest work of cult director Shinya Tsukamoto, renowned for horror movies such as Hiruko the Goblin and Tetsuo: The Iron Man, represents more than gore, the director saying he made the film as an anti-war statement in direct response to his government's moves to strengthen its military.
The film is a remake of Kon Ichikawa's 1959 classic about defeated Japanese troops in the Philippines at the end of the second world war. This, however, is a claustrophobic nightmare of explosions and spilt innards.
Japan is getting worse and worse and it’s going back to the past
Tsukamoto also plays Private Tamura, the main character in the film, which dwells on the dead and the dying among Japanese towards the end of the war. It shows the limits of endurance, and the desperate measures people will take to survive.
"In the last year all the people that had experienced war are getting older and older and many of them have died, so there are very few people who can testify and say what war really is," Tsukamoto said.
"At the same time, the political situation in Japan is getting worse and worse and it's going back to the past, militarily speaking, and also politically speaking," he said, referring to Japan's moves to bolster its military.
"So I just wanted to somehow push everyone's feelings towards these kinds of conditions. I want to address the audience as normal people to say, 'We are in danger', but at the same time I want to warn politicians and people who are in charge, saying, 'You are making bad choices and you must be careful not to go back to the past'.
"This is the reason I made this film."