Title: Tombstone.for.fireflies
Translation: Goodbye Fireflies
Director: Takahata Hoon
Synopsis:
"On the night of September 21st of the 20th year of the Showa period, I died. On the night of September 21st, Showa 20, I died."
This is the first line of the animated movie "Goodbye Firefly," and it instantly sets a sad tone for the production.
A ragged teenager, his breath dying, lies in a station where people come and go, heading toward the end of his short 14-year-old life, in Japan a month after the defeat of the war.
In a trance, the boy sees his dead sister, and the summer of fireflies.
The brother and sister were happy then, and the small metal box filled with candies, the fireflies flying in the sky, the brother's running through the night holding his sister's hand, and his sister's silver-bell laughter all became a relentless prelude to the tragedy that was about to unfold next.
The air raids began, and his mother died suddenly during the bombing. In front of this sudden blow, all his brother could do was to hide the news of his mother's death from his young sister. On the empty square, the older brother sold for the sister crying to find his mother to perform the bar, the sunset two thin figure looks so thin. Perhaps it was at that moment that the older brother tried to carry all the sadness and decided to hold up a clear sky without rain for his younger sister in the chaotic ruins.
The two siblings went to their relatives, but the war had alienated them, and the lack of material goods had made them even more indifferent to each other. More and more blank stares and fewer and fewer bowls of rice clearly show that they must leave. The brother finally decides to take his sister and move away to build a home of his own. But as he sang his way happily away, could he have predicted their irreversible and tragic fate due to that war?
The fireflies flew again, but the siblings' bad luck kept coming. Hunger and disease became the biggest problems that plagued them. In order for his sister to be able to stop starving, his brother had to steal, and while the airplanes were bombing, and he was overwhelmed whenever he found something to eat in the homes he had fled. The movie gives more ink to this life, the abandoned home, the desolate wilderness, every detail looks so real, between tranquility and cruelty, indifference and warmth coexist.
(Soundtrack: Brother is caught stealing, and after being severely beaten, he is taken to the police station, where the police are sympathetic to his situation and release him.)
In the darkness of an abandoned cave, the older brother catches fireflies into a mosquito net, which dances brightly in the sweltering summer night. Brother will be sleeping sister held tightly for fear of a loose hand will be lost again. At only 14 years old, he didn't realize that war itself meant loss.
There is only one night in a firefly's life, and everything passes in the smoky summer wind.
(Soundtrack footage: The younger sister gently buries the tiny body of last night's firefly into the small grave she dug, and says to the older brother, "I miss my mommy, and my mommy's in the grave too." The brother looked at his sister with wide-eyed surprise.)
It turned out that her sister had already known that her mother was gone and understood the meaning of death and the grave at such a young age. A handful of the tiny bodies of fireflies fell from Setsuna's hands, mixing with the dirt and turning to dust, and it was as if the older brother saw his mother's equally fragile flesh burning to ashes. Death struck his brother's young, strong heart once more, and the tears that rolled down his cheeks at that moment may have been for his mom, or for the firefly, or maybe just for the unbearable fragility of life.
The firefly, can only live one night. In the beautiful night, it shows its beauty to the fullest, and then falls quietly in the darkness. The harsh environment made Setsuko with eczema, but they had no money to go to the doctor, not to mention the money to buy the medicine ...... Finally, the young sister did not escape the double torture of hunger and disease, and died tragically.
The day Setsuna died was also in a night full of fireflies, she contained a smile, in the most beautiful scenery to find that only in the dream can live a happy life.
When the fireflies lit up again, the small metal box containing candy, the little girl named Setsuko with her silver-bell-like laughter, the air-raid shelter at the foot of the mountain with a swing at the entrance, and the fireflies flying all over the sky,......, all of these shots make people feel a kind of suffocating sadness.
(Soundtrack footage: Brother calmly lights the small bamboo basket holding his sister's body on fire, blood-red flames flickering in the bottom of his no-longer-clear eyes.)
Everything is so cruel, everything is so insensitive, everything is so futile in the face of war. The brother had fought as hard as he could for his sister and himself to survive, but he still couldn't keep the only loved one. Despair comes with the night, when the flame gradually extinguished, the ghostly fireflies for the lonely brother sang the most touching melody, one after another rising glow in the farthest sky into a warm smile. That was all that the war had taken from his life, all his loved ones.
"Goodbye Firefly", a seemingly simple anti-war theme, a series of slightly bland plot, however, very few animated films can make so many viewers tears, knuckles, the film that love candy little girl, her knitted brows and smile, a cry, and even the sound of each breath is so real, heartbreaking.