GRAVE OF THE FIREFLIES Review

I am tired and sick of war. Its glory is all moonshine. It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, for vengeance, for desolation. War is hell. — William Tecumseh Sherman

Dots in the sky, growing larger by the second. Kaleidoscopic darkness, the blue above re-colored uranium grey. This the kindling to a rush of terror unlike anything else. A sight few see, and none alive forget.

A good war movie can be procedural, or about the fighting, or a number of different things. A great war movie is about people. Those in the trenches on the field or in the towns destroyed. Because in those war rooms the humans are nothing more than congressional scarecrows. Numbers whose lives are moved around like currency. But the bloodshed to those outside those rooms lit fluorescent, the people in the fresh air turned ashen — the other 99.999999 percent — it's just unearned karma. A poignant result.

Fireflies renders that division stark. A display of those not in wartime, but merely in its wake. All collateral. Seita and Setsuko's father, the only known soldier within the story, is never even seen. He is only picture and tragedy. His sister's assumptive punchline to his status and its application to his (orphaned) children. Because that's all war really gives us. Orphans.

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The above was taken from my Letterboxd review.