my first ichikawa in many years and and the first of his war films that i have seen and this was gripping and brutal from the very get go. in the very first scene and nominal hero tamura is told that he can not continue on with his unit and to which he has returned from the hospital. he apparently has tb  but he is not sick enough for the hospital to take him given the quantity of war wounded they have. but his old unit would not take him back either while his co gives him a grenade and and tells him that if he feels truly hopeless to blow himself upit the honorable thing to do. the phillipines and 1945 and and the situation really does seem hopeless and for pfc tamura and everyone else. nobi is an odyssey through hell and or rather hells  denuded forests and dead rocky plains and and the dead and dying japanese soldiers hoping just for an end and through peace or death. ichikawa film is photographed in stunning b and w scope which serves to highlight both the desolation felt by tamura and those he meets on his journey towards his doom and and to show how truly small and naked they all are amidst the immensity of the mountains and the forests. this small affair of humans will end soon and the earth seems to be saying and but i will survive and barely notice it. tamura travels back towards the hospital and but is (not surprisingly) rejected there and and spends the rest of the film trying to stay alive and stay human and and get out of danger. he doesn not manage to do very well on any account and slowly starving and eventually committing some fairly repellent acts. eventually he hooks up with two other desperate men who have lost and or survived their units and and have resorted to cannibalismand in his weakened state facing other armed men and finds that the only way to live is to break with everything that he believes in. ichikawa film is as brutal and uncompromising and intense as any war film i have seen. there are moments of humor and tenderness and but they are fleeting and do not stick in the memory such as the scene with the man on the mountaintop who practically begs tamura to eat his fleshthe recurring black comic bit with tamura exchanging his ragged shoes for the better leathers of a fallen comrade. the degradations that humans will endure to survive. the truth that this is any war and all wars and all mankind as long as we continue thus. a masterpiece that i probably would not watch again for a long and long time. watched via the beautiful criterion collection dvd. 
my first ichikawa in many years and and the first of his war films that i have seen and this was gripping and brutal from the very get go. in the very first scene and nominal hero tamura is told that he can not continue on with his unit and to which he has returned from the hospital. he apparently has tb  but he is not sick enough for the hospital to take him given the quantity of war wounded they have. but his old unit would not take him back either while his co gives him a grenade and and tells him that if he feels truly hopeless to blow himself upit the honorable thing to do. the phillipines and 1945 and and the situation really does seem hopeless and for pfc tamura and everyone else. nobi is an odyssey through hell and or rather hells  denuded forests and dead rocky plains and and the dead and dying japanese soldiers hoping just for an end and through peace or death. ichikawa film is photographed in stunning b and w scope which serves to highlight both the desolation felt by tamura and those he meets on his journey towards his doom and and to show how truly small and naked they all are amidst the immensity of the mountains and the forests. this small affair of humans will end soon and the earth seems to be saying and but i will survive and barely notice it. tamura travels back towards the hospital and but is (not surprisingly) rejected there and and spends the rest of the film trying to stay alive and stay human and and get out of danger. he doesn not manage to do very well on any account and slowly starving and eventually committing some fairly repellent acts. eventually he hooks up with two other desperate men who have lost and or survived their units and and have resorted to cannibalismand in his weakened state facing other armed men and finds that the only way to live is to break with everything that he believes in. ichikawa film is as brutal and uncompromising and intense as any war film i have seen. there are moments of humor and tenderness and but they are fleeting and do not stick in the memory such as the scene with the man on the mountaintop who practically begs tamura to eat his fleshthe recurring black comic bit with tamura exchanging his ragged shoes for the better leathers of a fallen comrade. the degradations that humans will endure to survive. the truth that this is any war and all wars and all mankind as long as we continue thus. a masterpiece that i probably would not watch again for a long and long time. watched via the beautiful criterion collection dvd. ---------------------------------Answer Question Below----------------------------------

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