岡本喜八監督『血と砂』(1965)
戦争に抗いながら共振し、没してゆく人間讃歌のハーモニー
少年兵軍楽隊のそれぞれの生々しさ、
欲望・夢・野望・希望、この辺りがいっしょくたになった表情、そしてそれが戦地で散っていく途方も無い虚しさ、太平洋戦争中に戦地に赴いて夢半ばで没していった芸術家たちが想起させられる。(長野県にある「無言館」には行ってみたい)
集団を描く時に、"そんなに都合良く銃弾を免れることは不可能だ"という非リアリズムへの批判がうまれそうになるが、それを逆手にとったように後半、愛おしく映し切った青年たちが撃たれ始める。その瞬間、戦争の残忍さや過酷さがいっきに画面を侵食し始めた。この画期的な芝居における肉体運動は、フィクションを都度都度、戦争の本当の傷み一色に染めてしまう。
岡本喜八の戦争に対する眼差しが随所の台詞にあらわれていた。
「戦争」と「人殺し」の違いをうたう上官や、人を殺せず何もせず捕まり続ける捕虜、戦没者1人1人への言及、反戦映画の金字塔だ。
"Blood and Sand" (1965) directed by Kihachi Okamoto
A harmony of human hymns that resonate and die while resisting war
The vividness of each member of the young soldier band, their expressions of desire, dreams, ambition, and hope all mixed up, and the incredible emptiness of them being scattered on the battlefield, remind me of the artists who went to war during the Pacific War and died before their dreams were even realized. (I would like to visit the "Mugonkan" in Nagano Prefecture.)
When depicting a group, one might be tempted to criticize the non-realism, saying, "It's impossible to avoid bullets so conveniently," but in the second half, as if to turn this around, the young men who were portrayed so lovingly start to be shot. At that moment, the brutality and harshness of war begins to invade the screen all at once. The physical movements in this groundbreaking play paint the fiction with the true pain of war at every turn.
Kihachi Okamoto's view of war is evident in the lines throughout.
It is a monumental anti-war film, with references to a superior officer who sings of the difference between "war" and "murder," prisoners of war who remain captured without being able to kill anyone or do anything, and each and every one of those who died in the war.
