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Grave of the Fireflies
May. 4th, 2005 09:36 amThe same animation studio and acclaimed director who created Spirited Away and My Neighbor Totoro also produced Grave of the Fireflies, about the firebombing of Japan during WWII. AVN showed it last night and I'm still recovering. This animated film is the most relentlessly heartbreaking movie I've ever seen. The protagonists are a teenage boy, and a four-year-old girl that is exactly like my four-year-old niece. ( Spoiler warning. Do not click here unless you want your heart torn out and stomped on and be left a shell of a human being. )
I warned you not to click that LJ-cut. I wish I hadn't watched it.
What was really weird about this movie were the constant recruitment ads for the U.S. military during the commercial breaks. The film is not anti-U.S.-- no attention is focused on whoever is in the plane shooting at this boy or dropping napalm on his mom. Only on the cruelty and indifference of their neighbors and relatives. I don't think the U.S. would even be thought about, were it not for the commercials the cable channel happened to run in this jarringly incongruous context.
I warned you not to click that LJ-cut. I wish I hadn't watched it.
What was really weird about this movie were the constant recruitment ads for the U.S. military during the commercial breaks. The film is not anti-U.S.-- no attention is focused on whoever is in the plane shooting at this boy or dropping napalm on his mom. Only on the cruelty and indifference of their neighbors and relatives. I don't think the U.S. would even be thought about, were it not for the commercials the cable channel happened to run in this jarringly incongruous context.
