normal people
by Douglas Messerli
Natto Wada (screenplay, based on a novel by Shohei Ooka) Kon Ichikawa (director)野火 (Nobi) (Fires on the Plain) / 1959
The seeming insanity of this command is only the first of a series of
absurd demands put upon the living-dead soldiers of Ichikawa’s darkly comedic
work, a tale which reminds one, at times, of Beckett’s utterly confused and
immobile figures.
Tamura, played by actor Eiji Funakoshi, is what one can only describe as
a kind of wise fool, a good and obedient man with little of the ego of the men
he meets. When he is told he cannot be given a bed—men still able to walk or
even crawl are all refused refuge—he patiently waits with a group of others
outside the hospital, many of whom are near death and survive only on tubers
the local farmers long ago planted about the countryside.
When the hospital is bombed by American planes most of the bed-ridden
patients are killed, as the squatters and hospital staff run for cover, Tamura
along with them. The deaths of the escaping patients, forced literally to crawl
across the yard in an attempt to escape destruction, is one of the most
startling images through which the director reveals the horrors of war.
So begins Tamura’s near endless journey through the Philippine
countryside, as he encounters other men from surviving units as they attempt to
reach Palampon, where they hope to be evacuated. Sick, malnourished, reduced to
eating soil and leeches, Tamura instinctively—if mistakenly—moves away from
these soldiers toward the few signs of life he observes, small fires burning
across the plains.
That the path he has chosen is the most dangerous one is obvious. At one
point, seeing a small church in the distance, he comes across an abandoned
town, only to discover outside the small cathedral the bodies of dozens of
Japanese soldiers, who en masse have
been gunned down. Yet the return of a Philippine couple to retrieve a cache of
salt they have buried in their hut, arouses his hopes that he can establish
human contact. When he encounters the couple, however, the woman begins to
scream uncontrollably, and after silently pleading for her silence, he is
forced to shoot, killing her as her husband escapes.
Startled by his own violent actions, he rids himself of his rifle
shortly before encountering a pair of outlaw soldiers, Yasuda and Nagamatsu
(the later played by popular Japanese entertainer Mickey Curtis), who follow
the troops only to sell tobacco in return for food. Gathering with other men at
a road and river crossing, they wait for nightfall, hoping to protect
themselves from American guns, but as the crossing begins American tanks turn
their lights upon the escapees, killing many.
Those living, move gradually forward, some of them prepared to
surrender. Again, Ichikawa demonstrates the impossibility of any sane action in
war as a young Japanese man, waving a white flag as he runs toward a Red Cross
truck, is gunned down by a Filipina guerilla soldier in an American jeep before
the Americans can prevent her from what is clearly an act of revenge.
The long march forward is brilliantly captured in a series of dark,
satiric images in which one soldier, coming across a dead comrade, steals his
shoes, leaving behind his own; a short while later another soldier takes these
discarded boots, leaving, in turn, his own nearly soleless shoes behind;
another takes these up as he rids himself a pair of shoes without any bottoms.
Near death and nearly mad, Tamura once again encounters his bandit
friends, joyful just to be in human company. They offer him monkey meat, but he
cannot stomach food and his teeth, now rotten, fall out as he puts it to his
mouth. Yasuda, now unable to walk, seemingly cannot survive without Nagamatsu’s
help, yet the later sleeps far from him, his bed hidden in the forest, because,
as he tells Tamura, he fears his “friend.” And we quickly begin to recognize
what Tamura is unable to, that both men are more dangerous perhaps to one
another than their being captured—or even death. Whether or not that includes
their possibly starved sexual desires is never made clear. But we soon realize far
more dangerous possibilities.
As Nagamatsu goes in search of monkeys, Tamura follows him, suddenly
witnessing Nagamatsu’s attempt to shoot another soldier before the gun is
turned upon Tamura himself. “Don’t worry,” Nagamatsu assures him; he has no
taste for infected meat.
The meat they have been eating, quite obviously, is human flesh. When
Nagamatsu discovers that his guileless friend has given up his grenade to
Yasuda, he hides in waiting, shooting his former companion and, while Tamura
looks on in horror, eviscerating his body as he swallows down his innards.
Tamura has no choice but to slip away, running toward another fire he
perceives in the distance. Of course, it is dangerous to move toward what he
has previously been told are places where the natives burn their corn husks,
but he is now desperate to reencounter what he imagines as “normal people.”
In war, as Ichikawa has made clear, there can be no normality.
Gun fire, presumably from Philippine partisans, shoots him down.
Los Angeles, March 18, 2008
Reprinted
from World
Cinema Review (March
2018).
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