Forum - View topicGrave of the Fireflies review
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Cowboy Bebop
Posts: 8 |
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I've just read your review for Grave of the Fireflies, and all I can say is that I'm shocked, and a little ticked off. I can't believe you posted a review for a movie and then, blatently and with out notice, give away the ending of the film. I've never seen the movie, and have been looking forward to it for a long time, having read other reviews of the movie. I'll be getting it for christmas, and was just trying to build up my anticipation. Know that I know how the movie will end I'm sure much of it's impact will be removed for me. Please be more responsible in the future. If I don't receive some assurances that this kind of thing won't happen again, I'll have to stop using your site for movie reviews.
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Slim Shinji
Past ANN Contributor
 Posts: 263 |
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With all due respect, I don't feel I've ruined anything for you. Seita's death is the VERY first thing that happens in the movie, whereupon his ghost is joined by his sister's spirit. THEN the movie flashes back to tell the story of how they died. If the filmmakers wanted the ending to be a surprise they wouldn't have included that prolouge, and more importantly, I wouldn't have made mention of it. But they did, so I did too.
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Tempest
 I Run this place.ANN Publisher  Posts: 10539 Location: Do not message me for support. |
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Our reviewer did not give away the end of the film. As it says in the review, the movie starts out with the "conclusion" and then tells the events that lead up to this "conclusion." I've just re-read the review and Mike made this quite clear in the review. So, he gave away with the beginning, nothing wrong with that. |
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Kain
Posts: 34 |
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As someone who knows a thing or two about reviewing, I agree that nothing was given away that would take away from your enjoyment of the film in the slightest.
However, I will contend that perhaps the bit of information as to who does and does not die is not necessary to bring up in the case of a Grave of the Fireflies review. I know the first time I had watched the movie nearly a decade ago, I had no clue what it was about, and upon viewing the candid and shocking beginning I appreciated going into this movie blind in hindsight. I can see how knowledge of this beginning can in a way soften the brutal honesty of it. |
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Tenchi
 Posts: 4663 Location: Ottawa... now I'm an ex-Anglo Montrealer. |
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Am I one of the few people in the world that found Grave of the Fireflies forgettable? I mean that literally. I saw it once within a year or two of having joined my anime club (in 1994) and then only had vague memories of having seen it, all the time thinking that it was one of the few Ghibli films I had never seen and thinking what I saw was Rail of the Stars until I read a plot point-by-plot point (being someone who reads spoilers) description of GotF and realized that I had indeed seen it but just wasn't nearly as emotionally moved as... pretty much everyone else that had seen it, I guess.
I don't hate the film, Pon Poko being the only Ghibli film I actively dislike, but here's a brave, brave soul on the RottenTomatoes.com forum that expressed his serious problems with the film. |
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Jlbkwrm
Old Regular
Posts: 94 |
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MINOR SPOILER WARNING: Nothing that should really ruin the movie for you, but I make references to events that happen during the course of the film. If you don't wanna know, don't read.
I'm sort of middle of the road where GotF is concerned. I've watched it twice in the past four years, and still can't decide what I think of it. On the one hand, I can admire how artfully the movie is done. The pacing, the way time lapses, and the small touches. They all set a very effective mood. The problem comes in when Seita packs up and goes--and it's not even so much that he does this thing, but that he can't just swallow his pride later on, when things have really gotten bad, and ask go back. Part of it may be cultural--I really have no idea how the rationing system worked in Japan during WW2. It's entirely possible that, had Seita gone back, he wouldn't have been able to get food. But, as it stands, the movie leaves me very mixed. Sad about Setsuko, baffled and angry at Seita. That said, I do think this is an excellent movie. It just happens to be an excellent movie that manages to hit a few nerves for me, and leaves me conflicted. |
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GATSU
Posts: 16418 |
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I thought about it, and Seita's family members were really the ones who were exploited. I mean his dad dies while protecting Japan; his mom dies and her kimonos are sold for more rice
which the aunt pilfers; him and Satsuko live in squalor while other children laugh at them and destroy their shanty-town; and yet Seita is accused of being irresponsible. Sorry, but I'm sort of glad Takahata's (and Miyazaki's to a certain extent) generation's values which encourage children working-even during war time-are no longer the dominant paradigm in Japanese society. I mean, in the movie, one of the characters comments that the villagers have to live on rations, while the soldiers get the best food. (So the soldiers not only end up raping Chinese and Koreans, but also metaphorically raping their own people.) But ok, what if Seita swallowed his pride? Would he or Satsuko be any safer, considering bombs could drop anywhere? (If you look at the beginning, there were a lot of dead bodies besides Seita's, and while I wasn't there, I wouldn't be surprised if the situation amounted to "survival of the fittest".) And as he said,his factory and school burned down. What could he do? Build new ones? Edit: And I read that Rotten Tomatoes review, and the guy's a moron. War by definition is irrational; and thus people are less likely to act rational(and therefore friendly) during war. (Ever heard of "friendly fire"?) And he's ethnocentric as well, expecting a distinctly Japanese director to apply Greek methodology to story-telling. |
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Jlbkwrm
Old Regular
Posts: 94 |
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Okay, this one's SPOILER-filled. You've been warned.
The point where the movie started bugging me is when Seita, sick and tired of his aunt, packs up and leaves. She was pretty harsh and mean, so it makes sense in context that he'd just run off on his own... for a while. When things got bad enough that his little sister was starving to death in front of his eyes, covered in sores, clearly not far removed from death, it became an issue for me that he never once tried to go back to his aunt's. As harsh as she'd been presented, the character never struck me as the type to just let a little girl (or Seita, for that matter) starve to death. And that, really, is what bothered me. He was willing to steal from any and everyone in an attempt to protect his sister, steal from homes abandoned during the bombing warnings, but he wasn't willing to go back, swallow his pride, and apologize for her sake. He may not have known if going back to his aunt's place would do any good--but the current situation was clearly not leading anywhere good. So instead of viewing the end as a tragedy of war, I viewed it as a tragedy of youthful ignorance as magnified through the effects of war. So, while Setsuko's death still carries with it some large amount of somber poignancy, Seita's apparent (and, again, there may have been extenuating circumastances that the movie never made clear--I can only go off of what was presented to me) irresponsibility focused the blame in an unintended direction. I thought Seita's death was more or less a side effect of him giving up. Things had clearly gotten better (since he could now actually go out and buy food), but after Setsuko died he just stopped caring. |
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GATSU
Posts: 16418 |
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"And that, really, is what bothered me. He was willing to steal from any and everyone in an attempt to protect his sister, steal from homes abandoned during the bombing warnings, but he wasn't willing to go back, swallow his pride, and apologize for her sake."
Look at it this way. Did the aunt respect their problems? No. Did the aunt in any way try to convince them to stay? No. She just viewed them as burdens. If anything, I'd think the farmer was more selfish for not trying to help Seita when his sister was clearly starving. "So instead of viewing the end as a tragedy of war, I viewed it as a tragedy of youthful ignorance as magnified through the effects of war." I viewed war as it really is: An exploitation of people as commodities for the sake of of expanding your power and domination. It's amazing how you can corrupt a peaceful religion like Shinto for the sake of achieving your own ends. And it looks like it's still happening today with Christianity and Islam. (And Judaism to a certain extent.) "I thought Seita's death was more or less a side effect of him giving up. Things had clearly gotten better (since he could now actually go out and buy food), but after Setsuko died he just stopped caring." According to a recent article I read, food was so scarce after WW2 that the U.S. encouraged the Japanese to hunt whales. Chances are Seita didn't die from giving up, but because of starvation. But even if he did, what did he have left? You're talking about a traditional culture which is so interdependently connected to kin that they even let elderly family members live with them. With his close family dead and his aunt not really caring whether he was dead, who could Seita turn to? |
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Tempest
I Run this place. ANN Publisher Posts: 10539 Location: Do not message me for support. |
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LOL. Just reading the way you describe it shows how foreign it seems to you. "They Even Let Elderly Family Members Live with Them." A close friend of mine recently broke up with her white (wasp) fiance because he did not want her parents to move in with them later. True the whole way for Family of staying together in oriental culture is very different to the North American way of children going their own way, but why "even?" You speak of it as if it were something "dirty." |
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GATSU
Posts: 16418 |
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"LOL. Just reading the way you describe it shows how foreign it seems to you."
Actually, I come from an Eastern European background, and it's quite familiar to me. I was mocking the U.S. trend of disposing of people who have no use to society, starting with the elderly. (I intentionally meant it to sound foreign, because most people indoctrinated into our society don't really think about obligation, just personal gain. Of course, I still felt the obligations demanded of the working-class Japanese back then were too extreme.) I hate to sound Marxist, but the competition created from the war ended up destroying their traditional value systems, forcing Seita to be independent and "succeed", because he'd be a "failure" if he didn't. I keep wondering if Takahata didn't view him as a failure anymore than Japanese soldiers who didn't die for their country. |
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Slim Shinji
Past ANN Contributor
Posts: 263 |
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The point being debated here is one Takahata stresses greatly in the interveiw on the bonus disc, and I breifly mentioned it in my review as well: Seita IS being a bonehead by not swallowing his pride, his sister pays the price for it,and the intention was for the audience to have conflicted feelings about him. Takahata says that he is surprised that so many people sympathize with Seita, that he figured more people wouldn't like him for his actions. I think that's a testament to his power as a fimmaker that in spite of it all, Seita still comes across as human and sympathetic.
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Tempest
I Run this place. ANN Publisher Posts: 10539 Location: Do not message me for support. |
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Oops! I didn't catch the sarcasm, silly me. |
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Neilworms
 Posts: 155 Location: Chicago IL |
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Of course if you've read Nausicaa.net, you'll find that Takahata is most likely a marxist himself (I even think that Oshii made a direct refrence to him being one in the interview with him about Miyazaki; not to mention the episode of Patlabor TV written by Oshii where a soviet defector is helped by an officer named Takahata  ). So this analysis does make sense.
The thing I don't know is if he still has marxists views today, or if he, like Miyazaki, changed his philosophy shortly after the breakup of Yugoslavia. |
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Cowboy Bebop
Posts: 8 |
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Whether the ending of the movie comes at the end or the begining, it's still the ending of the movie. Something I didn't really need to know. I personally think you should never make reference to any plot points in a review. Talk about the quality of the animation, ability of the voice talent, did the direction serve the cohesiveness and over all feeling of the movie, was the video transfer done well, was the story compelling, did the music fit the mood, did you enjoy it, but not plot points. Thank you for your replies, but since you don't see the problem I guess I'll have to stop reading your reviews. I apologize if I've come of a little harsh, I was really just trying to offer constructive criticism, and probablly should have waited until after the heat of the moment.
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