Grave of The Fireflies Movie Review

Grave of the Fireflies (1988)

Director: Isao Takahata 

I thought I would mix things up a bit and go for an animated film next but instead of going for a Pixar or Dreamworks film I opted to go for a film made by the hugely respected Japanese studio; Studio Ghibli. The minds behind Studio Ghibli have made films such as My Neighbour Totoro, Howl’s Moving Castle and more recently Ponyo.

I had heard about Grave of the Fireflies from a few friends of mine who had seen it and reported of how emotionally scarring and bleak it is which intrigued me considering it was an animated film. They weren't wrong

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Grave of the Fireflies tells the story of a young brother and sister from a small Japanese village which is the victim of US air strikes during World War II. Early on in the film after a big air strike we find out that the young sibling’s mother has died and they are forced to move in with a family member who resents them for using precious food and not helping in the war effort. Things seem to get worse and worse when the brother and sister move out and live in an unused bomb shelter and have to deal with crippling hunger and constant fear of more bombing. I’ll leave the plot synopsis there to avoid spoilers but it isn’t hard to figure out what happens.

The film is truly tragic, I've seen quite a lot of war films in my time but none like this. It really shows you the horrors of war on the most human level I've ever witnessed, the irony is that the humans were connecting with and relating to are just drawings but it moved me more than any live action war film ever has. This doesn't break your heart in the same way the end of Toy Story 3 does, it breaks it on a Schindler’s List level.

The film also looks absolutely amazing, the design of the landscape these characters live in is at points, breath-taking. Both the design of the beautiful, natural landscape of Japan and the eventual war-zone that it becomes are equally as impressive and effective.

I really think everybody should see this film because it is a very rare thing in films involving warfare to handle the fragile emotions of the characters this well, Grave of the Fireflies is just perfection in that sense, you can really feel the grief radiating from every character. Overall, I think this film is brilliant and pulls everything off that it was trying to say. 

9/10

19/11/2015