J Paul Johnson
The Criterion Collection continues its program of upgrading catalog content to its 4K UHD format with its new-ish releases of Kon Ichikawa’s great World War II films The Burmese Harp and Fires on the Plain. Both films are unmistakably Ichikawa’s in their approach to cinematic storytelling, and each deserves the attention of any cinephile invested in serious anti-war cinema. And yet, the two films, made and released within a few years of each other, could not be further apart in their sentiments. The Burmese Harp is among the most uplifting and warmhearted of wartime dramas, made to enlighten and inspire; Fires on the Plain comes short only of Elem Klimov’s Come and See as the bleakest, most unsettling of films of all time and perhaps in any genre.
Criterion’s approach to upgrading its extant DVD and Blu-ray content rarely, if almost never, includes any significant repackaging (save the occasional newly commissioned cover art). Upgrading Ichikawa’s diptych-of-sorts to 4K is no exception. The two films originally entered the Collection decades ago on DVD as Spine numbers 378 and 379, respectively. The new 4K versions preserve the cover art, booklet insert and essay, and modest special features from those DVDs without any changes or additions. So, the attraction here is solely the 4K upgrade for each film, based as they are on original 35mm positives and undertaken by the Nikkatsu Corporation and the Japan Foundation.
The Burmese Harp
Ichikawa’s The Burmese Harp, though it admittedly is set in bleak aftermath of the Japanese surrender to the British forces in Burma in September of 1945, is ultimately so uplifting and positive it might have been adapted from a children’s book. In fact, it was, from a Japanese professor of German literature’s serialized novel for adolescents that found favor with a wider postwar audience and gave the director his first high-profile project.
The novel’s author, Takeyama Michio, reportedly never set foot in Burma but managed nonetheless to concoct a tale that resonated with a country desperate for a loss that could be honorable. Ichikawa’s film, closely adapted, begins with the surrender of a single regiment and a harp-playing private, assumed dead, who in order to survive, finds himself the perfect disguise with which to avoid the internment of his comrades: he shamelessly adopts the guise of a Buddhist monk. But doing so leaves him confronted even more directly the horrors of war.
As he wanders the Burmese countryside, at every turn the private Mizushima (Shoji Yasui) finds the fallen bodies of slain Japanese warriors. Having adopted the guise of a monk, he develops a conscience that dedicates him to burying the dead—a lifetime’s devotion. Meanwhile his interned troop, led by the captain, Inouye (Rentaro Mikuni), who gave him his last ill-fated assignment, find themselves conflicted by their comrade’s new guise. Has he abandoned them, or given their cause new meaning?
With its focus on redemption and use of music to convey the hopes and aspirations of the Japanese (and British) soldiers, The Burmese Harp is nothing if not eloquent in its meditative approach to the costs of war. In equal parts tender and brutal, Ichikawa’s measured, stately cinema provides a meditative occasion for grappling with legacy of Japan’s greatest loss. in the 1980s, Ichikawa would remake the film, in widescreen and color, to international acclaim and success—a testament to the story and the film’s enduring optimism.
Fires on the Plain
No one, to my knowledge, has ever suggested Ichikawa or anyone else remake the brutal yet unforgiving Fires on the Plain, made three years after The Burmese Harp. It shares with the earlier film a bleak postwar setting of defeat and despair; but where The Burmese Harp used music as a panacea for the disease of war and concluded with an overbrimming optimism, Fires on the Plain succumbs to despair in ways that are practically unprecedented onscreen.
Like in The Burmese Harp, Fires on the Plain isolates a single, desperate Japanese soldier, stranded in a strange-to-him land and consigned to a lost cause. But where Private Mizushima eventually finds grace through music and devotion, the protagonist of Fires on the Plain, Private Tamura (Eiji Funakoshi)’s trek brings him only closer and closer to hell.
Diagnosed with tuberculosis, Tamura is rejected by both the hospital and his own troop. Set out to wander aimlessly across an unfamiliar Philippine landscape, he encounters an increasingly debased cross section of Imperial Army soldiers. I know it’s not a necessity to avoid spoilers for a film over 65 years old, but I will leave it to those who have yet to see Fires on the Plain to discover its ultimate depravities for themselves. (I cannot quite yet imagine willingly watching this film more than once.) This is not to say that Fires on the Plain is not worth a watch; rather, it’s riveting: Ichikawa’s dark poeticism is on full display, and while viewers may know little more than hapless Tamura the film’s final destination, its journey is nonetheless completely compelling.
Special Features
Both films are packaged in a double-disc jewel case with the new 4K digital restoration on a single 4K UHD disc and a second Blu-ray providing both the film and the supplements. The cover art is unchanged, as is the single essay from accompanying each film. The only special features, as has been the case since these films’ first appearance in the Collection on DVD, are interviews with Ichikawa and an actor from each film—Rentaro Mikuni from Burmese Harp, Mickey Curtis from Fires on the Plain, and, for the latter film, a brief introduction by Japanese-film scholar Donald Richie.
All of these are helpful featurettes, though that each is ported over from prior versions makes the picture and sound quality of the films themselves the only reason to consider an upgrade. Picture quality on the 4K remaster is indeed impressive, a significant improvement over the 2007 DVD if not necessarily Criterion’s earlier Blu-ray release. That the two films so eloquently engage in dialogue with each other, representing both the heights and the horrors of humanity, gives one pause to wonder if they could not have been as easily collected in a single package at a reduced price.
As great as both The Burmese Harp and Fires on the Plain may be, it seems impossible or at least unwarranted to imagine one without the other, and both films benefit significantly from the insights of the other. Criterion’s upgrade of these to 4K UHD continues the Collection’s process of improving the available resolution of its catalog titles, though the new versions may not be worth the upgrade for owners of the prior Blu-ray set. Regardless, Ichikawa’s two war films are among the genre’s, the director’s, and his home country’s finest.
