The cruelty of real war is obviously stronger than that of live-action movies, just like movies that describe war, its cruelty will be stronger than that of animation. [Grave of Fireflies] is such an animation, it does not directly describe the war, but it can show the cruelty of war as much as the movie.
The disc I watched classified this animation as Hayao Miyazaki's work, but [Firefly] has nothing to do with Miyazaki at all. The director of [Firefly] should be Isao Takahata. The biggest difference between Takahata's style and Miyazaki's style is that Miyazaki is good at galloping in the long river of fantasy and dreams, while Takahata is good at depicting the real society and the feelings of characters in detail. This is more clearly manifested in Takahata's [My Neighbor Yamada-kun] in 1999. As the first film directed by Takahata after entering Studio Ghibli, [Firefly] can clearly see the competition between it and Miyazaki's [My Neighbor Totoro] in the same period.
Although I have heard before about how profound and touching this film is, I didn’t want to have this kind of mentality that I would definitely be moved at the beginning of the film. Because all the movies I watched with this feeling in the past have disappointed me, either because it was artificial or because the director's deliberate sensationalism was inexplicable. I just need a peaceful state of mind to judge it, moving or entertaining is the same thing in my opinion. So I chose the night. After the power cut off and everyone fell asleep, I sat alone in the dark and watched this movie. Really, I was moved by many details. To describe these tear-jerking scenes in one sentence, that is: Not to do is just fine.
[On September 21, Showa 20, I died of starvation...]
This is the first sentence of Artest at the beginning of the film. As the beginning of a tragedy, it is directly described by the dead, and death is here. Not as a representation of sadness and negativity, but here constitutes a novel entry point.
The dead Artest looked at his corpse lying on the street with a faint expression of sadness. In the next picture, supported by countless fireflies, Artest saw his sister Setsuko in the faint blurry light. They got on the subway and looked as solemn as they were going to Huangquan. The whole picture is bright and warm tones like fiery red and golden yellow, and the two little people melted in this layer of light.
The main line of the story is simple. In the 2nd World War, Artest lost his mother after an air raid by the U.S. military, and stayed at his aunt's house alone with his young sister, Setsuko. Faced with the problems of food shortages brought by the war, people's hearts gradually became selfish, and the aunt became less and less interested in seeing the two brothers and sisters living in her own home. Brother Artai couldn't bear his aunt's cold eyes towards him and his sister, so he and his sister moved to the air-raid shelter on the mountain. But even with the care of her brother, her younger sister Setsuko died of malnutrition in the end. Artest, who had just lost his sister, also received news that his father's fleet had been wiped out. In this way, Artest, who lost all his family members and fell into despair, finally starved to death on the street.
The young Artest also looked like a junior high school student. When I watched the first half, I always felt that he was very strong, even if it was a kind of forbearance in disguise. Whether it was seeing his unrecognizable mother wrapped in bandages in the ward, or watching his mother's body being thrown into the mass grave, the young Artest didn't cry. No mother and father, no father and no sister. This may be the simplest dream of young Artest at that time. The dead mother can no longer be resurrected, so why not let the sister live well without knowing it. Artest hid the news of his mother's death from his sister. He wanted Setsuko to live without sorrow.
Three times, keep that number in mind. Artest only cried three times in the whole film.
The deepest impression was when my sister Setsuko buried the fireflies for the first time. Setsuko told Artest that he already knew that his mother had died. I saw that Artest, who once tried hard to defend the lie that his mother was still alive in front of his little sister, and Artest who wanted to put all the suffering on his shoulders, cried so sadly and desperately for the first time.
My sister knows that, doesn't she? Then, what is it that you want to deceive so hard, and that you maintain like a fool?
Perhaps, the cruel question that no one can answer is the most depressing. In Japan during World War 2, almost every family faced such a situation. The father or the adult man in the family entered the army, and the mother and the young children and the elderly stayed at home. Once the war comes, the disintegration of families is inevitable. In such an era, how can human life not be like the twilight of life and death.
Just like beauty and cruelty are always opposite. There are both post-war streets, maggot-covered corpses, and piles of starving deaths. But while expressing the ugliness of these deaths, I also remember the fields, white clouds, and beaches it depicts, as well as the fireflies of summer nights and the sweets that bring Setsuko joy. But these beautiful views are always interrupted by the sudden appearance of dead bodies and air raid sirens, and then the next moment the scene will turn into screaming crowds hiding around. The fleeting beauty is so tense and unreal, yet so precious.
To speculate another way, perhaps depicting these beauties is just to take care of Artest's love for his little sister. Give her the best, care for her, love her, and even wish to blindfold her so that she cannot see the ugliness of war.
How wonderful is this idea. Those of us who watch the movie like a god know that's not possible. We can't change, we can't help, we can only watch as things slowly get destroyed.
Tragedy has been defined as tragedy from the very beginning, and naturally has its reasons. I don't know why, but halfway through, I wondered if Setsuko was going to die, and this inexplicable premonition in my heart always made me uneasy. Sure enough, the innocent little girl, the one who refused to leave crying, the one who was holding the doll, the one who was riding on her brother's back, really died in the end. When she was seriously ill, Setsuko was lying on the straw. She ate the soil and imagined that it was cake, and chewed the buttons and imagined that it was candy. At this time, the young and innocent Setsuko had completely lost her former liveliness and brilliance, and she was just like a twilight old woman waiting to die.
Suddenly I want to sigh with emotion that many books say [Young children do not have any faults, but the environment still wants them to die. ]
I suddenly imagined that, like Artest, after Setsuko died, I cried for her day and night for a few days. if. This cry can bring words of salvation. I mean. if.
At the end of the story, there is no direct account of Artest's death. It's like a dream belonging to a little girl who sells matches. Artest became the girl who relied on matches to keep beautiful fantasies on a snowy night. He watched his favorite Setsuko come running like him, laughing and throwing himself into his arms.
This was Artest's last wish, and it was the only hallucination he had left before dying.
It is no longer possible to pursue the culprit that killed the brothers and sisters, and such pursuit is meaningless. The tragedy of the brothers and sisters is but one of a thousand tragedies for the deaths brought about by the times. After the war, some people turned to dust; some people returned to their devastated hometowns; and for the last remaining people, they had lost everything in the war, and they even had no hope of surviving. never left.
However, no matter which of these types of people it is, I am convinced that it is difficult for those who have experienced the suffering of war to regain the simple and pure happiness of the past. The time it takes to make up for the pain in a person's heart is often longer than the time it takes to make up for the pain in the body.
Just like the beginning of the film, Artest took out the tin box and put the delicious candy poured into Setsuko's mouth. Setsuko tasted the sweetness of the candy and leaned against his brother tightly. They were sitting in the subway, heading for unknown locations. This is a fairy tale, this is just a fairy tale to dilute the cruelty. Oppose war, believe in beauty and cherish life. Leaving aside all kinds of negative views, perhaps, what [Firefly] wants to teach us may be such a simple truth.
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