Beautiful and human

Rating: 8/10 (28 February 2010)

I haven't seen a more beautiful animation than 'Grave of the Fireflies'. Not only is the imagery gorgeous, but the scenes are composed and arranged with the same care as seen in the best of art-house movies; and the horror of the fire-bombing of Japanese cities (seen by some as sufficiently terrible to make the nuclear option a morally superior alternative) is fully conveyed. In fact, this is such a serious movie (in all senses of that word) that it begs the question: why was it made as an animation at all, and not as a conventional film? Perhaps the answer is that in the flesh, it might have been so sad as to be unwatchable; at the end of the day, this is simply a story about two people who starve to death. Indeed, the film even begins with a (strictly unnecessary) flash-forward, as if the director did not want to betray any hopes we might otherwise have mustered of a happy ending. Raymond Briggs's 'When the Wind Blows' obviously comes to mind, but this film is broader in scope: it's as much about social breakdown as the war itself. The fireflies, a metaphor for lost souls, linger on in the mind.