The film is based on Ooka Masahira's novel, adapted by Natto Wada, and directed by Ichikawa's filmic work, which is largely faithful to the original, but the fact that God stopped the protagonist was removed from the description. Because it can be described with words or ideas, but cannot be described with images. Therefore, in the movie, due to the malnutrition of the protagonist, he wanted to eat dry meat, and as a result, his teeth fell out and there was no way to eat it. This is an ingenious visualization of the concept that makes the audience feel "fortunately not eating human flesh" in a sad and funny taste. Director Ichikawa liked to make comedies in the early days. In "Wildfire", also in the realistic reproduction of the tragic defeat, there are actions and lines that tend to be dramatic. Eiji Funakoshi, who plays the protagonist, First Class Tamura, expresses his exhausted soldiers with a smiley expression and drunken swaying steps instead of the usual deep expressions and heavy steps. Crazy Officers are also comical in a sense. This is certainly not intended to make the audience laugh or to be sarcastic. It is a comical image that makes people cry when they are still fighting hard from a human standpoint even when human survival is impossible.
A soldier who was wandering in the mountains of the Philippines after being completely separated from his comrades on the battlefield became completely alone. As he walked farther and farther away from his comrades, he was chased more and more urgently by the enemy. Finally, when we reached the uninhabited wilderness, we saw a small smoke from cooking in the distance. He wandered deep in the mountains and almost ate human flesh in the end. Regardless of being forced to the point where "if you eat human flesh, you are no longer human", or you want to go to a place where people live. So even though I knew that I would be killed if I was found by the Filipinos, I still wanted to go to a place where there were people, so I went down the mountain and walked towards the plain, and I ended up at a plain with nothing.
These are all described in the original book, so it's fine to shoot according to the original book, but here you can still see the appearance of the Ichikawa-style lens. There was a wisp of wildfire in the distance of the plain with nothing. He figured that there must be someone in that wisp of wildfire, so he walked in that direction. At this time, bullets were fired from the past, and he might be shot to death, but he thought it was better to be killed than not to be a person, so he held up his hands and continued to move forward. In this last scene, the man becomes a small point on the vast plain and moves forward. A little firework rose in the distance. No matter how small it is, one must have something like a wish that has to be fulfilled, and the smaller the better. Prayer must be concentrated, and if it spreads, it is not prayer, so it must be concentrated to a small point in the picture
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