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For Gen, a young boy living with his family in 1945 Hiroshima, the true horrors of war are a distant thing. Whilst other Japanese cities suffer near total devastation from Allied bombing his home city remains strangely untouched, his enemy is hunger - wartime rations don't stretch that far for a family of five, and things are made even more difficult by his mother's pregnancy. However, his family is strong and he is resourceful, his father's crops are maturing and they all believe things will get better. However, a black silhouette on the horizon bears a deadly cargo, a cargo that will turn Hiroshima into a hell which will destroy lives for decades to come. From the radioactive ashes the survivors must rebuild their city and lives, and Gen must somehow support what is left of his family amongst the crime and poverty-ridden shanty towns that rise from the rubble. His spirit brings him friends and with them the hope of a better future after the horrors they have endured. Carefully timed to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima, Barefoot Gen is released as a double feature with its sequel Barefoot Gen 2 on a single DVD. With nearly three hours of running time across the two films extras on the disc are understandably quite thin on the ground (consisting of a small section and featurette about the charity War Child, who receive a donation from Optimum for each copy sold), and the film is in Japanese only with optional English subtitles. It does have a standard price point of £19.99 however, which is good value for money for two very good films. Barefoot Gen is quite an old film, and this is apparent not only in the dated animation but also in the occasionally fuzzy audio. The impact and quality of the film however certainly hasn't dulled with age. Gen and his family's tale of triumph over adversity which takes up the first third of the film is a little cheesy, but it is such a contrast to the horror that follows that it makes it all the more powerful. The film hinges on the bomb, and despite the limitations of the animation the bombing sequence makes for very difficult viewing. No punches are pulled in showing the horror of the bombing, buildings warp in the heat and disintegrate in the blast; men, women, children and animals literally melt; glass peppers those in shelter. These events are hard enough to watch on their own, but the fact that this actually happened makes it infinitely worse. The immediate aftermath is an even more harrowing experience, with hideously burnt people seeming more like zombies than human beings as they stumble in shock through the burning rubble, and you really feel Gen's fear and despair as he struggles to save his family. From here on in tragedy tempers his attempts to support his mother and baby sister, but what makes the film in this last third is the way it depicts the survivors recovering from the horror and Gen's hope in the face of such hardships. It's because of this humanity that the film lives on long in the memory. Barefoot Gen 2 was made several years later and this shows in the animation, which is much better than in the first film. Despite this I must admit I approached it with some trepidation as the original Barefoot Gen is such a hard act to follow, however, it soon became clear that any reservations on my part were ill founded. Barefoot Gen 2 follows an older and wiser Gen as he and his step brother Ryuta try to get by in the shanty towns that have risen from the rubble of Hiroshima, and support their ailing mother who is trying to hide her illness from them. This film showed what you don't really see in the history lessons - what Hiroshima was like after the bomb. It shows an alienated youth orphaned by war and getting by through scavenging and petty crime, it shows the struggle for food and the black markets, but it again it shows the hope for the future as Gen makes friends and together they overcome the challenges that face them. To be honest I probably preferred Barefoot Gen 2 to the original, it showed a period of Japanese history that most Westerners aren't familiar with and whereas the bomb was (understandably) the focus of the first film, the sequel focuses on people. The surreal imagery of a society beginning to get back on its feet - for me encapsulated by the scenes of a tram travelling through a landscape of rubble and twisted metal - combined with the real character driven plot makes this every bit as much of a classic as Barefoot Gen. It is also intriguing to see the attitudes of the characters in the film, as they will be familiar to anyone who has watched or read Akira - the alienated and forgotten youth depicted in Barefoot Gen 2 are echoed in Katsuhiro Otomo's classic sci-fi, one of Gen's friends even looks like Akira's Tetsuo Shima. Some people may complain about the lack of
English audio or extras - although it is worth noting that the DVD comes with a
booklet featuring an essay by the excellent Jonathan Clements and an interview
with Barefoot Gen's author Keiji Nakazawa, who based the story on his own
experiences of the bombing - but these films are worth your money. There
is a danger with films based on true life horrors to be afraid to criticise them
in case you are seen to be insensitive, however, whilst these two films are not
perfect they are genuinely worthy of their status as classics. The first
film may be dated but it loses none of its impact, conveying the horror and
emotion of the bombing with real force, and Barefoot Gen 2 may come
across as cheesy from time to time but it successfully depicts the strength of
human spirit in the face of true adversity. The two films are harrowing
but inspiring, delivering an emotional impact only rivalled in anime by the
superb Grave of the Fireflies. There are events in history that
should never be repeated, and as Schindler's List served as a powerful
testament and a warning to the horrors of some of the darkest times of the 20th
century, so too does Barefoot Gen. |
