my first ichikawa in many year and and the first of his war film that i have see and this be grip and brutal from the very get go . in the very first scene and nominal hero tamura be tell that he can not continue on with his unit and to which he have return from the hospital . he apparently have tb but he be not sick enough for the hospital to take him give the quantity of war wound they have . but his old unit would not take him back either while his co give him a grenade and and tell him that if he feel truly hopeless to blow himself up it the honorable thing to do . the phillipines and 1945 and and the situation really do seem hopeless and for pfc tamura and everyone else . nobi be an odyssey through hell and or rather hell denude forest and dead rocky plain and and the dead and die japanese soldier hop just for an end and through peace or death . ichikawa film be photograph in stun b and w scope which serve to highlight both the desolation felt by tamura and those he meet on his journey towards his doom and and to show how truly small and naked they all be amidst the immensity of the mountain and the forest . this small affair of human will end soon and the earth seem to be say and but i will survive and barely notice it . tamura travel back towards the hospital and but be ( not surprisingly ) reject there and and spend the rest of the film try to stay alive and stay human and and get out of danger . he doesn not manage to do very well on any account and slowly starving and eventually commit some fairly repellent act . eventually he hook up with two other desperate men who have lose and or survive their unit and and have resort to cannibalism and in his weakened state face other arm men and find that the only way to live be to break with everything that he believe in . ichikawa film be a brutal and uncompromising and intense a any war film i have see . there be moment of humor and tenderness and but they be fleet and do not stick in the memory such a the scene with the man on the mountaintop who practically beg tamura to eat his flesh the recur black comic bit with tamura exchange his ragged shoe for the good leather of a fall comrade . the degradation that human will endure to survive . the truth that this be any war and all war and all mankind as long a we continue thus . a masterpiece that i probably would not watch again for a long and long time . watch via the beautiful criterion collection dvd .