Grave of the Fireflies Number of Items: 1 Format: Animated, Color Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated) Studio: Wea Corp Product Group: DVD Release Date: 2004-12-07 Buy from Amazon |
"so sad, but so good...." This movie illustrated, quite poignantly, how the victims of our world's greatest (violent) conflicts and destruction are those who had nothing to do with them: the children. This movie opened my eyes to see beyond the film as a WWII story sympathizing with Japanese loss. The two children, could have been children in any country during time of war. Their suffering was the result of others' passiveness to help, of people's self-centeredness and self-righteousness. And isn't that the ultimate root of all war and our world's suffering? "how many people will have cried by watching the movie?" Maybe, in U.S.A even the name of Hayao Miyazaki will be known here and there. He made many movies till now, Spirited Away, Totoro etc. But the best work that I was moved very much is this movie, Grave of the Fireflies. In Japan, though this movie have been taken high evaluation from all Japanese, is not known more than other Miyazaki's works like Spirited Away. Maybe the same thing will be said in U.S.A. It is very regretable. For instance, this movie was roadshowed with Neighbor Totoro. Main movie was Totoro, and Grave was sab movie. If the watchers are children, their favorite work may be Totoro, but in the point of letting us think about more deep things, peace, love, tenderness, the strong bond between brothers or our happiness that can eat many foods, this movie will be more high splendid movie than Totoro. When I watch this movie, I feel that I am getting many things than the age of this movie, especially foods, but in the other hands, I thought that I was losing many things, tenderness for others etc for letting me fllow in daily benefit, money. Ceatainly they had many trouble on surface aspect, but in the mental points, I am inferior to them because they had the strong family bond like never broken even if they were in the severe condition. This movie is true story on Akiyuki Nosaka's same title novel book. In the movie, the shelter cave where Nosaki and his sister lived actually was re-showed. Nosaka was very surprised to the animation re-creation power. I was eight years old when I watched the movie first time. At that time, I felt why they went out from their aunt's house and dared to live in shelter cave, should live in the house even if they flattered to the aunt. But as I have grown, the thinking changed little by little. Though the selection might not be clever, they wished to live by themselves and be free. If there may be opinions that children should not watch the movie. But though I watched the work in my child age, there was never the bad influence, to the contrary even now the movie have strong impact for me on good meaning. Because this movie is on true story, we should not turn our eyes away from the movie. If we gaze to true things, peace will be made too. I do not dare to talk about which countries should have the war responsibility. The most expecting thing is that people over the world can feel the non sence of war by watching the sorrow movie. If war broke on the point of the benefit of countries, we should stop war by feeling the sympathy to sacrifices for absurd wars. Thank you for reading poor English to last scentence. "A truly masterpiece of animation!" Based on an autobiographical novel by Akiyuki Nosaka, Studio Ghibli delivers a riveting story of World War II. The movie tells the story of two orphaned children who have to stand on their own after losing their parents during the war. Where to begin? Being a movie from Studio Ghibli the quality in animation is guaranteed, what makes this movie so compelling is the drama and the tragic turn of events in the lives of these two kids. The movie opens with the family running from a raid in their town, planes are passing by bombing and shooting at people. From there, the lives of these kids change dramatically, the situation of the war is not the only thing they have to deal with but relatives that help them more for obligation than wanting to do it, the indifference of the people of the town and the difficulty of getting something as basic as water and food during war times. The main characters are well defined from the very beginning and the two siblings will make you cry a couple of times during the movie, the story is well adapted from the book and it perfectly demonstrates its point. You get to see how gradually their innocence is lost due the circumstances they had to live in, they have to suffer some horrible tests in moments that can be defined only as heartbreaking. The movie has hardly any music at all, but the more dramatic moments of the film are accompanied by a score that could not have fit better (sadly, the music writer doesn't get his credit on the American version of the DVD) The extras offered in this edition might not be many, but the movie itself is a perfect excuse for buying this DVD. The only extras worth mentioning are the storyboards for the entire film included here. The sound mixing is pretty decent, you can watch the movie dubbed in English or in Japanese with subtitles in English; audio options are 5.1 Dolby digital stereo for both languages. Next to Miyazaki's films, this movie is a must for film collectors, anime at its best. |