Reception
In its early release in the United States, many American critics dismissed Fires on the Plain as a gratuitously bleak anti-war film. In 1963, The New York Times film critic Bosley Crowther gave the film a quite harsh description, writing "Never have I seen a more grisly and physically repulsive film than 'Fires on the Plain.'" He continued, "So purposefully putrid is it, so full of degradation and death... that I doubt if anyone can sit through it without becoming a little bit ill... That's how horrible it is." He notes however, "this is a tribute to its maker, for it is perfectly obvious to me that Kon Ichikawa, the director, intended it to be a brutally realistic contemplation of one aspect of war." He points out, "...with all the horror in it, there are snatches of poetry, too..." He ends the review commenting that the only audience who would enjoy the film were those with bitter memories towards the Japanese held over from World War II.
A 1961 Variety review also cautioned that the films bleakness made it a difficult film to promote to audiences, commenting that it "goes much farther than the accepted war masterpieces in detailing for humanity in crisis." Variety's review is more positive than the New York Times, calling it, "one of the most searing pacifistic comments on war yet made... it is a bone hard, forthright film. It is thus a difficult vehicle but one that should find its place."
Dave Kehr of the Chicago Reader said: "No other film on the horrors of war has gone anywhere near as far as Kon Ichikawa's 1959 Japanese feature." John Monogahn of the Detroit Free Press compared it to Clint Eastwood's Letters from Iwo Jima. The film is not without criticism however, and many Japanese critics dislike Ichikawa's work.
In response to the recent Criterion collection release, Jamie S. Rich of DVD Talk review, had the following to say about it: "I wouldn't call Kon Ichikawa's Fires on the Plain – Criterion Collection an anti-war film so much as I'd call it a realist's war film. Rather than build his story around big explosions and the thrill of battle, Ichikawa instead brings the human drama front and center, directing his spotlight on a soldier who is left to his own devices when the guns stop blazing. He poses the question, 'When stranded on the bombed-out landscape after the fighting has calmed, what will those left behind do to survive?' It's bleak and it's chilling, and yet Fires on the Plain is also completely engrossing. It's the post-action picture as morality play, the journey of the individual recast with Dante-esque overtones. Ichikawa doesn't have to hit you over the head with a message because the story is so truthfully crafted, to state the message outright would be redundant. Once you've seen Fires on the Plain, the movie will get under your skin, and you'll find it impossible to forget."
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