What makes this film great is that it shows us subdued yet horrific images and ideas that are difficult to forget. Action is not the main focus of the film, but the increasing depravity of the desperate soldiers, in a war they are sure to lose. It is, without a doubt, much more daring in its indictment of war than any of the German films I've seen about WWII.

The story takes place in the Philippines during the final days of the war. The Japanese had originally tried to invade this country, but now they are surrounded, as danger lurks everywhere, and the Americans are sure to win. The main character is a solider affected with tuberculosis, who is knocked about back and forth between his troop, who feel his illness is a waste to an already damaged group, and the army hospital, who say that he isn't sick enough to be admitted. His chief tells him that he ought to stick it out, and demand a place in the hospital, but, if there is no hope, this hand grenade will end your life quickly, so you can save face.

He does go to the hospital, but for much of the time he stays outside the hospital with a bunch of other ill rejects. Niether he or the others have any luck in being admitted into what turns out to be a pretty run-down establishment (a shot of the hero having to walk over a patient pretty much sums up the conditions). Soon there is an attack, and, apparently, everybody is killed except the hero. Naturally, instinctively, he attempts to save himself, finding a stream so he can get some water, and avoiding the explosions and shelling. He comes to grip with the fact that he saves himself, even as he aggreed with his chief that he would commit suicide if he were not admitted to the hospital. He decides to carry on, and along the way meets people who are even more discouraged, desperate, or depraved than he.

There are many disturbing images; certainly the most desperate act that the hero commits is when he arrives at an abandoned Philippine village and confronts a young couple scrounging for something. He kills the woman, and tries unsucessfully to shoot the man. The hero then politely neats and flattens her clothing before noticing a bag of salt inside the floor. He pushes the body aside to get it. But many of the others he encounters are even more desperate. Two men stake out an area to sell tobacco for food to any poor soul passing through. Everybody lives on a few rotten potatoes and salt. And there is a peculiar montage which would probably work in a silent comedy if it weren't for the depressing nature which surrounds it; one guy finds a pair of boots on the ground better than his own, so he takes off his own boots and puts on the other; another guy find those boots, which are better than his, and so on, until the hero finds a pair of boots, with holes where the feet should be. Since he too has boots that are similarly worn out, the punch line is that he continues on with bare feet.

The film contains a genuinely shocking development; the implication that the Japanese soldiers engaged in cannibalism in order to survive. When the hero meets a group of officials, they say that they survived on human flesh in New Guinea, and they joke that he ought to watch out, he might get eaten. This fact is a set-up for the conclusion, in which two characters that the hero had already encountered earlier shoot people for sport, and eat them for supper. The utter sickness of this is revealed in a gruesome shot near the very end. The director doesn't wallow over the details, but he doesn't have to. The facts of the scene are still disturbing.

The film is very depressing - I was worried that it would be more graphic than it actually was (cannibalism isn't excatly family-friendly, you know!), but even without sickening images, the film still works as a horrific indictment of what war does to the people involved.
 

Rating: ***½

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