Blog post 3: GRAVE OF THE FIREFLIES 火垂るの墓

GRAVE OF THE FIREFLIES
火垂るの墓 analyzed through the lens of melodrama

This is a devastating Ghibli film that depicts the cost of war through the story of Seita, a teenage boy, and Setsuko, his little sister. Together, they must survive American firebombs after losing both their parents to the war. 

PLOT:

The movie opens by revealing the final outcome right from the beginning: depicted is Seita dressed in uniform, on the night of his death. It then cuts to present-day, in which he is malnourished and dressed in drab clothing. As Seita dies at a train station, train passengers disregard him and janitors throw out his tin candy can into a faraway field. It then cuts to the ghost of his younger sister. The ghost of Seita picks up the tin can to return it to Setsuko, and they walk off into the distance.

The movie cuts to a flashback to explain this devastating outcome. After the two lose their mother to a firebombing, Seita and Setsuko are left to fend for themselves. Their only other relative is their aunt, who convinces Seita to sell his mother's kimonos for food. Seita gives the food to her but keeps a tin can of candy for Setsuko. As rations shrink, the aunt becomes resentful of the two children. She screams at Setsuko when she cries for her own mother, and eventually put the siblings in a position to buy their own living supplies to live on their own.

They find an abandoned bomb shelter to live in. On the first night in their new home, Setsuko discovers fireflies in the fields and brings them into the shelter for light. The siblings decide to fill it with fireflies but are horrified to find that they all die the following morning. Setsuko decides to bury them in a grave, revealing to Seita that her aunt had told her about her mother's ill-fated death, and how she had been thrown into a grave. Seita, who had done everything he could to keep this a secret, is devastated. As the two begin to run out of rice, Seita grows into the habit of stealing. One day he is caught and is taken to the police. Setsuko finds him at the station and admits that she is feeling sick. When they go to the doctor, he explains that Setsuko is suffering from malnutrition.

Seita withdraws all the remaining money from his mother's bank account and learns of Japan's defeat to the US. He realizes that his father is likely dead. Although he is able to purchase a lot of food, when he returns home, his sister is dying. Seita tries to feed her watermelon, her favorite snack, but as he prepares more food, Setsuko takes her last breath. Seita cremates his sister's body in a straw casket, filled with her personal belongings. He carries her ashes in the candy tin can, her favorite candies. He is now left to fend for life on his own.

The movie ends with their ghosts overlooking a current Kobe from a hill. They have united once again... but in spirit.

THEME: The Unfairness of Seita and Setsuko's Situation 

In The Melodrama of Being a Child, Karen Wells writes, "Character in melodrama is not expressed through dialogue but through situations, mise en scéne, action-tableaux and episodic narration... [for] the spectator to viscerally identify with other people's experience, particularly their suffering and the incontrovertible unfairness of the situation... Critical to the effective representation of innocence is the powerlessness of the suffering subject; it is the subject's lack of structural power and capacity that signifies the impossibility of being culpable for his or her own suffering. It is for this reason that melodrama invariably centers on women and children and, to a lesser extent, racialized minorities... In melodrama, the action is constrained by the passivity and impotence of the victim in his or her confrontation with villainy and injustice."

The inability of the narrative to be resolved by simply allowing an adult to rescue Seita and Setsuko creates an excess that is portrayed through facial expressions, music, and the colors of the animation. The realism of Setsuko's malnutrition and Seita's inability to help cannot be resolved: even after the war has ended, others are powerless to stop their suffering. The rich are able to return to their homes, untouched and innocent to the threat of bombs. 

But not Seita and Setsuko. Their mother and father are both dead, and they have no other relatives to go to for care. 

This heightens the devastating effects of the film, leaving the audience feeling as if they are at fault for not having been able to do anything to help. Although the characters have dialogue, it is as if they don't have a voice, confined by the reality of their situation.  

THE UNSYMPATHETIC AUNT: 

The narrative begins by making it immediately clear that the two have no one to go to for care except their aunt, who is unkind and unsympathetic to their situation. When Seita tells her of his mother's death, rather than do anything to make Seita feel better, she yells at him for not telling him any sooner. She even convinces him to sell his mother's kimonos for rice when food rations grow smaller.

Although Seita makes it clear that he wishes not to reveal of their mother's death to Setsuko, his aunt does so anyway. In one scene, Setsuko and Seita play on the piano singing a tune to brighten their dampened spirits. Despite this, their aunt comes into the scene to yell at them to be quiet and make "be more productive," because she is angry with them for not helping around the house. 


The aunt's total lack of sympathy for their situation creates a toxic environment for Setsuko and Seita. Although the aunt is their only relative that can provide a home, the two must leave and survive on their own. 

LIFE WEARS AWAY THE WILL TO LIVE: 
Critic Dennis H. Fukushima Jr. finds the story's origins in traditional double-suicide plays. Although neither sibling actually commits suicide, life simply wears away their will to live. 

SETSUKO's GESTURES:

Gestures are used to give voice to Setsuko's limited vocabulary. She is a child, after all, and lacks the ability to express her emotions in the same way an adult is able to.
Unlike a live-action film, animated films are unable to show human reactions. Post-war films produced by Ghibli are known for using "limited-animation" techniques to lower production costs but speed up the production process. Even if animations were not fluid or fully animated, images could be flashed in rapid succession and create an illusion of motion. This is what Takahata, the director of this film uses by blending limited animation with naturalistic motion to highlight still poses. 

When Setsuko begins to cry about missing her mother, Seita does everything in his power to cheer her up. It doesn't work. The film focuses on a shot of Setsuko wavering left and right, pouting at the ground, holding back her tears. Even when she is about to cry, the animation of her quivers and she stands still, twisting her legs together. The style of the animation heightens the realness of Setsuko's emotions and gives voice to her suffering.