Grave of the Fireflies, 1942 movie reviews

[Xavier_Onassis]

I rented Grave of the Fireflies from Netflix on MT's recommendation. it is the tale of a young (perhaps 12 to 14 year old) boy, the son of a naval officer, during the final days of WWII, starting with the fire bombing of some Tokyo suburb, and ending with his death in September, 1942. His father is gone, his mother is killed, and he is left to struggle to keep himself and his young (3 or 4 year old) sister alive in a time of utter chaos and famine. It is certainly a powerful anti war film, as Tee says, and a worthy competitor to Waltzing with Bashir as an animated antiwar film. It is done in anime style, and that is what makes it less powerful, in my opinion, to Waltzing with Bashir. To me, anime is too cutesy for this topic, but of course, I am not Japanese and the film was not made for me. The Bashir film was made for Israelis and an international audience, and so is more in line with my view of reality and artistic sensibilities than Fireflies. Israel is a Western country and its flim traditions are Western as well.  It also helps that the story behind Bashir is factual rather than fictional, and the conflicts in it are psychological rather than literary.

Fireflies is certainly worth watching, and has some really beautiful scenes. It is the best anime I have seen to date. Not quite as good as Bashir, but close.

 The MD Public Library has a lot of DVD's and there are always a lot of animes and Bollywood films available, because my guess is that they are less popular. The Japanese population of Miami is tiny, and there aren't all that many Indians, either. I have yet to see an Indian in a public library. My Rajastani colleague HK Chaudhri, tells me that he rents his films at the Indian grocery store and was very surprised to hear that the MDPL had any Bollywood films at all. He has recommended several films to me which I found almost incomprehensible.  I attribute this to faulty subtitles, mostly.

The best Bollywood film I have seen to date is "1942", about an incident in a provincial capital (somewhere in the cool and scenic mountains) between the locals and the Brits, in which it ends triumphantly and anachronistically with Indians of all castes dancing and waving Gandhi's flag (with the spinning wheel) as they celebrate their unified Indian-ness. It has a couple of scenes where the leading man and lady and their 500 friends who all dress alike swoop in and sing songs of love, as the rebels prepare their bombs and unpack their rifles. Again, the Bollywood tradition of making every film a combination Buzz (or is it Bus?) Berkeley musical  AND some other genre is rather limiting as is anime drawing style for someone not used to it liked me. I'd say 1942 is maybe 3 stars.

I have noticed that Bollywood films normally take place in the mountains. A few take place in Calcutta. Indian film stars tend to look more European than most Indians. When they appear in public, they are darker than in their films. The male lead's best buddy tends to be rather funny-looking, but the female leads best girlfriend simply dresses less colorfully. I am sure that there are a lot of plays on words, and funny accents in Hindi and whatever that are lost on me, as the actors laugh at things that are not even remotely funny  in the subtitles. Translating a Hindi pun to English can't be easy. Allusions to all the gods and folktales are also common and confusing to me sometimes. No one makes Ganesh jokes, as I would if a blue elephant were considered divine in my culture. All bald men are comics in Bollywood films, unless they are playing Gandhi. There is a fairly decent biopic of Gandhi's son, called Gandhi, my Father. Gandhi was very concerned not to show any favoritism to his son, and as a result his  son's life was tragic.He was a gambler and a drunk and perhaps a swindler. No dance numbers at all, as I recall, maybe 2 stars.



  

[Universe Prince]

Busby Berkeley. The man's name was Busby Berkeley.

[Michael Tee]

Glad you liked Fireflies, XO. 

I can't really comment on animation style, except to say that I'd never seen an anime film before (or since) Fireflies, so the form seemed novel to me without the triteness that probably would have attached to it had I been able to associate the form with lighter vehicles.  I remember thinking at the time that I'd never seen in any WWII or postwar documentary anything approaching the horror of the firebombing scenes, and that perhaps animation was the only way of getting that particular message out.

I was also impressed by the animation quality of Bashir.  Reading about the film later, after I'd finally seen it, I realized that the film's creators had actually developed a  novel technique for animation never before seen.  I guess the reason I wouldn't have considered Bashir superior to Fireflies was that despite the relative merits of the two techniques, it was only in the latter film that the technique had shown me something that I really had not seen before.

The other reason that I found Fireflies to be the superior film had to do with more personal factors.  I'd never before been disturbed by the human cost of Japanese suffering in WWII, having hated them so much for the torture of our prisoners of war, which I'd grown up knowing about.  My baby-sitter cried about her son, who was in a Japanese POW camp.   My neighbour's tongue was cut off by the bastards.  I really didn't give a shit what happened to any of them after that.  Seeing this for the first time through Japanese eyes, especially the eyes of innocent children, moved me to tears.  You had to wonder why, why them?  The kids were very sympathetically portrayed, for the first time I really started to see them for what they were.

Bashir, OTOH, really irritated me with its message, "The Phalange did it."   "We're guilty only of not intervening."  What fucking bullshit.  It was the exact mirror image of the Jassy (Romania) ghetto massacre of WWII, when the Nazis sealed off the ghetto and allowed armed anti-Semitic Romanian militia to enter it.  "The Iron Cross did it.  We're guilty only of not intervening."  Same fucking thing in Lithuania and in the Polish village of Jedwabne.   It was infuriating to see Jews using the exact same methods and excuses as their Nazi tormentors.  If the Jews didn't learn anything from the horrors of the Holocaust, who the fuck ever would?

[Kramer]

I recommend you & XO see the movie "The Lives of Others"

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0405094/


"The Lives of Others" is at once a political thriller and a human drama. The film opens in East Berlin, in 1984, with a scene where "Stasi" Captain Gerd Wiesler (Ulrich Muehe), code name "HGW XX/7," is demonstrating his interrogation technique to a class of aspiring "Stasi" policemen, using an actual video of his own interrogation of a suspect. A student asks a question that Wiesler judges to be a bit too compassionate (read "bourgeois"), and the professor marks the student's name on the attendance record: surely this student has just flunked the course, or maybe worse. During the feature's first thirty minutes, von Donnersmarck depicts a portrait of Wiesler that seems to border on caricature: Wiesler is a highly skilled officer of the "Stasi", a proud, zealous, disciplined professional. He is one of the many cogs in the wheel of "the System," working anonymously and tirelessly, convinced that all his efforts are necessary for building a better Socialist society.

At the end of the class, Lieutenant-Colonel Anton Grubitz (Ulrich Tukur), Wiesler's old school friend (and probably his only "friend"), who has risen to the position of head of the Culture Department at "Stasi", comes to invite Wiesler to a theatrical premiere. The play is by the celebrated East German playwright, Georg Dreyman (Sebastian Koch), and its leading character is played by Dreyman's lover, Christa-Maria Sieland (Martina Gedeck), herself an actress of great reputation. Up to now, Dreyman, who writes plays about the heroic proletariat, has lived a rather comfortable life in an East Berlin plush apartment, enjoying a certain notoriety among the DDR officials while preserving the respect of his fellow artists by using his (relatively) secured position for occasional interventions in favor of fellow dissident artists. Wiesler, at once, suspects that Dreyman's loyalty to the party is not as strong as it would seem on the surface, even if the high party officials are convinced. Following the play, Grubitz has a brief conversation regarding Dreyman, with Culture Minister Bruno Hempf (Thomas Thieme), who also was attending the premiere. Hempf is attracted to the leading lady. However, since Dreyman is in the way, he must somehow be eliminated. Hempf, who happens also to be a member of the ZK ("Zentralkomitee") who has authority over the "Stasi", tells Grubitz about his reservations regarding the playwright's loyalty to the SED ("Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands," or Socialist Unity Party), suggesting a full-scale surveillance operation of Dreyman. Grubitz, always eager to better his own political future, asks his friend Wiesler to manage this "Operative Procedure" (the highest level of monitoring of suspected individuals), code-named "Lazlo" (an allusion to "Casablanca?"), the latter promising to oversee the case personally. Soon after, Hempf meets the artists at a party in their honor, and in a rather unsubtle way lets Christina-Maria know of his feelings toward her.

Wiesler stalks Dreyman, noting his comings and goings, and while the playwright is temporarily away, has Dreymans apartment systematically bugged. Wiesler sets up his surveillance headquarters in the attic, just above the apartment. Soon Wieslers observations indicate that, contrary to his prejudices toward artists as free-thinkers, Dreyman's attitude toward the DDR and its SED is not particularly scornful. In the meantime, Christa-Maria has been "convinced" by Minister Hempf to be receptive to his advances, and when Wiesler finds out about this development, it dawns on him that maybe Operation Lazlo has more to do with the libido of the Minister than with the DDR's security.

Dreyman is provoked to take some action, any action, by the awareness of his lover's unwanted sexual relationship with the Minister and the death of his close friend, theater director Albert Jerska (Volkmar Kleinert) who had been driven to suicide after many years of being blacklisted by the government. Dreyman resolves to help reveal the true face of the DDR Government to the outside world. With the help of well-positioned West Germans, he plans to publish an anonymous exposé in one of the leading West German weeklies, "Der Spiegel," concerning the DDR Government cover-up of the high suicide rate in East Germany.

Wiesler, who has been monitoring Dreymans activities all along, has finally trapped his victim and will provide another victory to the DDR by foiling Dreymans plot. However, Wiesler is starting to waver in his determination to bring Operation Lazlo to its conclusion. In the process of snooping in his victims' everyday life, including their love-lives, he has unconsciously been drawn into their world, which in turn has put his own in question. When Dreyman's article is finally published in the West, it is a public disaster for the DDR, and the playwright becomes one of the prime suspects. Grubitz is incredulous that in spite of his expertise, Wiesler could have been duped by Dreyman. Minister Hempf, discovering Christa-Maria's drug addiction, threatens to terminate her acting career unless she collaborates with the authorities and denounces her lover as the author of the embarrassing article, which she does. "Stasi" searches Dreyman's apartment, but comes up empty-handed. Now Wiesler, who had withheld the evidence concerning the source of the article, must now decide where his allegiances lay: to the DDR and to his brilliant career as a top "Stasi" officer or to Dreyman whose honest lifestyle he has come to appreciate. I will not reveal the remaining twists and turns of the story that lead to a dramatic resolution of the Lazlo operation, because you should discover it for yourself.

Following this resolution, we are projected seven years forward in time. The Berlin wall fell two years earlier, as Dreyman runs into ex-Minister Hempf (who has survived the political upheaval very well, thank you), who tells him about Operation Lazlo. Dreyman, using the "Stasi" archives which have now been made public, discovers the reality of his past and its cruel truths.

[Xavier_Onassis]

As I said, both films were excellent.

The Japanese committed multitudinous atrocities, especially in China. There was little justification for them starting the war with the US. Most of what they wanted in the region was petroleum, and the main reason for wanting it was to pursue their military domination of the Pacific. They probably could not have attacked the Dutch, British and French colonies in the Pacific and along the Pacific Rim without the US being drawn into the war, though.

I agree that the Israelis should not have allowed Sabra and Shatila to have occurred. Of course, the film suggests that, but does not say it outright. I doubt that it would have been seen by nearly as many people had it had an overt message. As it is, it mirrors what the Israeli soldiers believed and said accurately. But judging the morality is left up to the viewer. One clear message of Waltzing with Bashir is that the entire invasion of Lebanon was a major mistake that resulted in the death of thousands and benefited no one.

An interesting detail I found amusing, not really related to the film...

In 1989 a group came to North Miami HS and invited any HS junior that had the money (about $4000) and the desire to spend a semester in Israel in a special school located near Tel Aviv. My daughter's best friend at the time was Jewish (on her mother's side, anyway) and my daughter told me what fun she thought this would be. Being as my daughter had never really learned how to study and had no interest in anything more serious than mall fashions, and my father had left me some money, I figured that being surrounded with a bunch of kids whose parents were concerned about them learning something, I figured that this would teach her how to study and at the same time let her see a different part of the world from a non-tourist point of view.

She was the only Gentile in the entire group. In the history of the program, she was the third in ten years. But I was right: she did learn how to study, and she did learn a lot about other people and places, and she got three college credits as well. She made a very good friend on the trip, an Orthodox girl from London, who invited her to visit her in England. Three years later, when she went to England, this girl only spoke on the phone once to her.  Why, I never found out.

In any case, I read that Zionist settlers called those born in Palestine sabras. Sabra is the name given to the prickly pear or nopal, a cactus native to Mexico, transplanted to Palestine in the early 1900's as cattle food (people at them, too). And being as my daughter's mother was born in Mexico, I thought that was very interesting. I assume that the name sabra given to the refugee camp had the same origin. I find it amusing that the name given to Israeli-born Israelis is the name given to a transplanted alien plant. Prickly pears are unappreciated in the S, as they are a nuisance to ranchers, and Americans are unaware that the fruit is delicious and the leaves can be dethorned and made edible.

Mexicans say when someone has nothing to eat, "siempre hay nopales" There are always nopales. But they are seen as Indian food. I have never seen nopales on any restaurant menu, not even in Indian pueblos where they serve chicken-foot soup and various delicacies made with pig innards. Mexican friends I asked about recipes for fixing 'nopalitos' were insulted, sort of like American might be if you assumed they knew how to cook a possum or raccoon.

I never managed to make nopalitos that were more than just edible. But the fruit is delicious when eaten after it turns bright red and is refrigerated. Like a kiwi, with lots of small edible seeds, but sweeter.

The main disadvantage of having sent my daughter to Israel is that she was completely convinced that the Israelis were right about everything, so we do not discuss this topic. Not being Jewish, this is not a major handicap. I am still unaware of her stand on Transdinestrian independence as well.

[Michael Tee]

XO - I'm glad your daughter got something positive out of her trip to Israel.  There are a lot of talented, intelligent and motivated people there, and contact should be beneficial.  However, if she ever gets the desire to return to Israel, try to get her interested in tours organized by B'Tselem or other Israeli human-rights groups which show tourists the Occupation.  They get to meet people of the Occupied Territories and hear their side of it.   

If I could guess why the Orthodox girl never contacted your daughter beyond the single phone call, my guess would be that her parents would not permit her to open up any kind of relationship with a gentile.  Sad but typical of the Orthodox.  If you want to read about the difficulties they have in opening up relationships with non-Orthodox Jews, The Chosen, by Chaim Potok, is an excellent true-to-life story with rather romanticized characters that deals with this very peculiar insularity.

Kramer, I saw The Lives of Others a long time ago.  Timothy Garton Ash, a British journalist, dealt with the same them in The File, a nonfiction account of the problem which may have inspired the film.  Good book, good film.  The system was basically good, but like any good system, can easily become corrupted.   I regret the demise of the DDR.  The Stasi were essential to its functioning, but obviously, not without abuses of the system.

[Xavier_Onassis]

I read The Chosen several years ago. Potok is a good writer. When my daughter went to London to see her friend, they were both over 24 years old.   

[Michael Tee]

<< . . . they were both over 24 years old. >>

Yep, and I still stand by my first guess.  Till an Orthodox girl is married, she obeys the head of the household.  After marriage, she obeys the husband on matters like who she can be friends with.  We know this from personal experience as well as general reading.

[Xavier_Onassis]

I don't doubt what you say. I really don't know more than what my daughter told me. They were good buddies in Israel, they wrote letters every month or so, and in each letter this girl asked my daughter to visit her in London. My daughter went to London, and the girl would not even come meet her in a restaurant, or even answer the phone, according to my daughter. Then it rained all the time and my daughter came home with the flu.

Religion makes people behave in strange ways. The same sort of behavior can be found among fundamentalist protestants, fundie Mormons and others.


 

[Michael Tee]

I think the difference is that fundie Prods etc. are still interested in meeting the heathen because they might be able to convert them.  I've been "befriended" a couple of times by Bible-Belt types who thought I'd be receptive to their version of the One True Religion.  Since the Orthodox Jewish identity is a mixture of race and religion, there is absolutely no interest in converting gentiles, who lack the necessary pedigree, so there's a big difference between these fundies and the other kinds.  Ironically, it's more like Nazi racial theory, in that blood-lines are as important as belief - - in this corner, ladies and gentlemen, you have the Master Race, and in that corner, the Chosen People.  They're both pretty obsessed with blood-lines and ancestry, though neither one would appreciate the comparison.  Hence the irony.

[BT]

I think the difference is that fundie Prods etc. are still interested in meeting the heathen because they might be able to convert them.  I've been "befriended" a couple of times by Bible-Belt types who thought I'd be receptive to their version of the One True Religion.  Since the Orthodox Jewish identity is a mixture of race and religion, there is absolutely no interest in converting gentiles, who lack the necessary pedigree, so there's a big difference between these fundies and the other kinds.  Ironically, it's more like Nazi racial theory, in that blood-lines are as important as belief - - in this corner, ladies and gentlemen, you have the Master Race, and in that corner, the Chosen People.  They're both pretty obsessed with blood-lines and ancestry, though neither one would appreciate the comparison.  Hence the irony.

Not a dumb response.

[Amianthus]

"With the notable exception of some Syrian Jewish communities, all mainstream forms of Judaism today are open to sincere converts, with all denominations accepting converts converted by their denominations. The rules vary between denominations."

More at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conversion_to_Judaism

[Xavier_Onassis]

The issue is not whether Jews do not accept converts, but whether the religion has as its goal to convert as many people as it can.

Christians and Muslims alike, encouraged by St. Paul and Mohammad, see their religions as ideally converting EVERYONE. Jews have no such evangelistic goals. There is no official Jewish goal of converting the entire world to Judaism.

There is a Youth for Christ organization, but no Youth for Moses.
So  tend to agree with Tee.