Fires on the Plain (1959)

In the chilling grip of February 1945, the Battle of Leyte reaches its waning crescendo. Among the dense jungle foliage of the Philippines, the once mighty Imperial Japanese Army is now a ragged phantom of its former self, abandoned by their leaders and starved of sustenance. Amid this disarray, the narrative follows the harrowing journey of a tubercular Private Tamura, a lost soul in a chaotic orchestra of survival, as he grapples with the rapid disintegration of command and control. Shuttled between the cold indifference of his unit and the sterile confines of a field hospital, Tamura is cast adrift, left to negotiate the treacherous landscape and the tightening stranglehold of the American forces. His path intersects with Yasuda and Nagamatsu, two opportunistic survivors who trade the smoky allure of tobacco for the bare necessities of life, their existence sustained on the grisly sustenance of "monkey meat." Tamura, however, is beset by a more profound struggle. As he bears witness to the horrifying lengths his fellow soldiers go to for survival - a descent into madness, murder, and even cannibalism - he strives to retain his human principles amid the bestial fight for existence. As desperation threatens to consume him, Tamura is forced to reckon with the terrible price of survival, a price that may demand more than he is willing to pay. "Fires on the Plain" is a haunting exploration of the human spirit, pushed to its limits and beyond, in an unforgiving crucible of war and desolation. It's a tale that blurs the lines between the hunter and the hunted, survival and surrender, and sanity and madness. In the darkest corners of the jungle, and in the deepest recesses of the human soul, fires burn on the plain.

Fires on the Plain is a drama movie featuring Eiji Funakoshi.

Fires on the Plain is currently streaming for free (ad-supported) on Kanopy and it's also available on Criterion Channel.