a harrow masterpiece on the sheer madness and despair of war and fire on the plain ( nobi ) be not go to be to everybody taste represent this be a war movie in the true possible sense of the term and one that resort neither to flag wave patriotism nor saccharine sentimentality . nobi cuts deep and it ugly and tenebrous and bleak a few thing ever commit on celluloid will ever be . this be war behind the cannon and with no triumph or hero and no moral victory or defeat to be have and just a handful of gaunt and terrible look men strew across a land ravage by war like penitent flee a great disaster . the character defy moral judgment because they be creature beset by a great woe and a woe that do not permit question of a moral nature . war and survival . pit one will against the other in a battlefield arena . the loser be simply remove from existence . tamura and soldier in the japanese imperial army and be discharge from his platoon and order to report in a nearby hospital on account of him cough blood and be dislike by the rest of the platoon . he tell to never come back and instead commit suicide by hand grenade in case the hospital reject him . which it do . the hospital be nothing but a shack made of wooden plank and the hospital surgeon simply tell him that if he capable of walk he just fine . it be in that shabby excuse of a hospital that one of the most harrowing scene of the film take place . a the area be carpet bomb by american plane the doctor and those who can walk and sustain themselves flee from the hospital and into the wood . moment before the hospital be blow to piece and the gaunt and crippled figure of the sick and injured crawl out of it in every manner of posture and dress in their sickly white robe and a if the building be some kind of beast spew viscera and filth out upon the earth . that be nobi great success while the stark and brood depiction of the suffering of war in simple but evocative image and without melodrama or pseudo heroism . soldier cross a marsh and wad knee deep in mud and move across the opposite bank and into a field only to discover enemy tank hide in the wood and their light shin like malignant eye a they scan the dark . a procession of injured soldier and dirty and half mad and cross a road and drop to the ground on the sound of enemy plane . buzzard feast on a pile of dead body . an abandoned village . a mad soldier that believe himself to be buddha sit under a tree and cover with fly and his own excrement and offer his arm to be eat by tamura when he dead . these be the image kon ichikawa conjures for our eye and merciless and unflinching in their poignancy but honest and raw . nobi doesn not rush to get somewhere . it be content to follow tamura travel through the war torn land a he try to reach the regrouping center of palompa and and observe the madness and obscenity of war . the movie wad through the sludge of the horror of war and slow and brood and just like the character it follow . the final thirty minute with tamura take refuge with two deserter who fee on amonkey meat be the close nobi come to adhere to conventional narrative and theyre no less powerful for that matter . strikingly photograph in black and white and with great performance from the cast and and ichikawa assure direction and nobi be not only among the best war movie to be make but also among the fine of japanese cinema .