Ivan Radford | On 22, Sep 2024

Director: Isao Takahata
Cast: Tsutomu Tatsumi, Ayano Shiraishi, Yoshiko Shinohara, Akemi Yamaguchi
Certificate: 12

When was the last time you cried at a film? When was the last you cried just thinking about a film? If you’ve seen Grave of the Fireflies, the 1988 Japanese animation is almost guaranteed to be the answer to at least of one of those.

Isao Takahata’s deeply profound classic is set in the final months of the Second World War. Based on a semi-autobiographical novel by Akiyuki Nosaka, it follows two children from the port of Kobe, whose town is devastated by bombs: Seita, a young teenage boy, and Setsuko, his even younger sister. With their father serving in the military and their mother killed by the bombs, their lives are uprooted by the horrific destruction. And when their distant aunt doesn’t look after them, Seita leads them to a hillside cave to survive by themselves.

We already know before that decision that things will not end well – the opening shot of the film shows us Seita at a train station dying from starvation. That clarity sets the tone for what follows: not a sprightly family-friendly adventure, as animation had largely been at this point, but a sorrowful piece of neorealism. That quietly bold and game-changing reframing of animation as a form not a genre makes Takahata’s one of the most significant movies ever made – but its subject matter makes it a masterpiece beyond that context, as its understated frankness spells out the human cost and consequences of war.

Given the fiery decimation in the background, the film’s remarkable quality is its stillness. It patiently explores the beauty of the wonderfully drawn natural landscape, just as Seita and Setsuko become immersed in it, lingering gently with slow shots that gives us and them time to process some of what’s going on. But as food and money run out, as days descend into night, the colours slowly, subtly fade, as the vibrancy of life drains away.

The atmospheric darkness is punctuated with flickers of childlike wonder, as the kids catch fireflies and light their cave with their glow. When the time comes to bury them the next day, Setsuko asks: “Why do fireflies die so young?” The destructive power of the flames at the beginning, the all-too-short glimmer of youthful hope in siblings lost too soon, the fleeting wonder of life and nature while it exists, they all become wrapped up in a flutter of grief and guilt, our awareness of their brief existence only heightening their intensity. Grave of the Fireflies packs more into 90 minutes than most TV series.

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