Very disturbing movie

[TransformX]

Yesturday night I saw the movie Grave of the Fireflies with my wife.
I wouldn't recommend it unless you really love being deeply disturbed.

Plot outline according to IMDB:

Setsuko and Seita are brother and sister living in wartime Japan. After their mother is killed in an air raid they find a temporary home with relatives. Having quarreled with their aunt they leave the city and make their home in an abandoned shelter. While their father's destiny who was a soldier is unknown the two must depend on each other to somehow keep a roof over their heads and food in their stomachs. When everything is in short supply, they gradually succumb to hunger and their only entertainment is the light of the fireflies.

If you intend to watch the movie, read no further.
What you do get there, with the plot above, is to see a little girl slowly dieing of malnutrition.

[Jessterw]

I'd actually have to disagree on recommending that people watch it. Movies like this should be required watching, just for the very simple reason of showing what war does (malnutrition wasn't the only affliction).

Very sad, but a very real depiction of post-war circumstances in Japan.

[schmosef]

Japan attacked America. Conditions for American civilians would have been much worse had they succeeded.

The emperor and his family should be required to watch this on a continuous loop.

[TransformX]

If only the movie was about Japan and/or America.
Like Jesterzwild said, it's about post war countries and the way people treat other people.

[schmosef]

I totally sympathize with the Japanese people. I just think that blame for their plight should be rightly affixed.

You, of all people, should know what I'm talking about.

[Jessterw]

Originally posted by schmosef
Japan attacked America. Conditions for American civilians would have been much worse had they succeeded.

The emperor and his family should be required to watch this on a continuous loop.

Yes, but the movie deals with the effects, in an indirect way, of the atomic bombs dropped. Which, regardless of what most people think, were far from necessary means to end the war.

We're going off-topic on that point. The movie is about so much more than Japan and America and WWII.

[TransformX]

Schmosef, I know what you mean, but this movie in particular just happens to be Japanese. It could have easily been about kids in England during the German bombardments, or kids in Germany when the Brits and Americans retaliated. They could have made that movie about children in any country during war and it'd be the same.
The movie doesn't have so much Japanese culture imbedded in it, nor too many historical pointers to make it so Japanese that it couldn't be (too) easily applied to kids anywhere else around the world.
At least for me, it made me think about all those children in Africa.

[Chrono_Wanderer]

Has anyone ever considered what Japanese soldiers did to us Chinese?

My grandma had to flee from the Japanses... hoping not to be put into concentration camps, alyways cared of being raped by Japanses soldiers, and had to live on leaves for food...

Don't get me wrong, I am not anti-Japanse. I just hate the wartime japanses government with a passion. From what I heard the Japanse texts are educating their current generation that they never invaded offensively...

[Sasq]

Actually I love the movie.
If you haven't seen it, grab a copy it goes by another name of 'Tombstone for fireflies' in some places. The original title is 'Hotaru no haka'

As a few people have pointed out, it deals with 2 children, one is 15 the other is about 4. They are orphans just trying to survive the last days of a war. They deal with relatives that treat them badly, rationing of food, and a hundred other trials of supporting themselves in a war raviaged country.

Ignore that this movie is based in Japan, it really isn't so different to what happens in any war - and a few that are happening now.

So please lets not go onto what the Japanese did to so and so, and I mean that quite seriously - or I will start pointing out each of our respective countries faults.

[Umfriend]

Pah!, Smurfland is without smurf.

[Lizzard[MPE]]

Spread out over a few day peroid, I didnt get to see it all, someone needs to send a copy back with jesse

[Jammrock]

Graveyard of the Fireflies is an incredible, and incredibly depressing, movie. It goes along the same lines of Saving Private Ryan, something every male should see at least once.