This Japanese film follows a soldier, Tamura (Eiji Funakoshi), who, along with hordes of other men, has been stranded in the jungles of the Philippines during the waning days of World War II. As Japan’s Imperial Army faces dire conditions — the men have been cut off from communication, and food is scarce — gruesome realities descend. Some men go insane. Others resort to cannibalism. Amid the brutality and hopelessness, Tamura, who has tuberculosis, flees his troop and struggles to survive.  Surrounded by murder, starvation, and cannibalism, he retains his humanity in the face of his comrades’ savage behavior.  Because of his physical condition, Tamura knows he cannot save himself.  Ironically, it is the illness that dooms him to certain death that frees him to act with dignity.

An agonizing portrait of desperate Japanese soldiers stranded in a strange land during World War II, Kon Ichikawa’s Fires on the Plain is a compelling descent into psychological and physical oblivion. Denied hospital treatment for tuberculosis and cast off into the unknown, Private Tamura treks across an unfamiliar Philippine landscape, encountering an increasingly debased cross section of Imperial Army soldiers, who eventually give in to the most terrifying craving of all. Grisly yet poetic, Fires on the Plain is one of the most powerful works from one of Japanese cinema’s most versatile filmmakers.