#1: Barefoot Gen

      
 

  I stumbled on this movie some 3 or 4 years ago when on a camping trip somewhere outside of Strasburg, VA.  My friends I stopped into to town to grab some food and water and found ourselves perusing the aisles of a video store that was selling its old VHS's for a dollar.  Barefoot Gen was the first one that caught my eye, and i bought it, thinking it would be some quirky Japanese coming of age story because I scanned over the Hiroshima bit.  

  I finally watched it a year ago and it blew me away.  Told from the point of view of Gen Nakaoka, the oldest of three kids I believe, who was living with his mother in Hiroshima when the bomb was dropped.  The cover had thrown me off because something in my mind linked the art style with that of Astroboy and the like, but I was very wrong.  It's a sucker punch of a movie, much more powerful than I had imagined.  His mother and some others are killed in the explosion, and he's forced to raise his siblings by himself.

  

  The bombing itself may be one of the most singularly powerful scenes in any animated feature I've seen. When it explodes, the sound stops, and scenes flash white-hot, turning bodies into nothing more than burnt corpses and shadows on a wall.  The film spares no one in depiction, to show the viewer that the bomb acted the same way.  Barefoot Gen was made in 1983 and the animation is superb, using disorienting shifts in perspective to give a panoramic view of the instant genocide  that will really stick with you.

  
 

  After doing some research, I found that not only is this a true story, which it did mention at the beginning of the film, but it was a comic before the animated feature.  It ran during the 70's, and the writer Nakazawa based Gen's struggle off of his own during the bombing, and that feeling really comes through, at least in the film.  

   I've heard views about Anti-American this and Pro-Japanese that, but I don't think either of those effects were the intended ones.  This film is meant to transcend cultural pride or propaganda, and show the story of an individual, a person, not of a national identity.  That identity is not lost by any means, but by focusing on the struggles of one child and family in the midst of a destroyed community, Barefoot Gen shows us the people behind the explosion that we either forgot, pushed away from our minds, or just didn't even care about.

ETA: I commented on Chris's Blog and Jeannie's Blog.

Comments

[Jeannie]

I actually have seen this one but I have seen similar ones. I recommend a story called Grave of Fireflies It is also an anime (Japanese animation) about the war and focuses on the children. To this day I am unable to watch it through to the end because of how emotionally moving it is.
Its nice to see these movies reach generations of people who may never have considered the aftermath of such events. As a history major I know reading about them is one thing but being able to emotionally connect to the material is an amazing and difficult thing to do. Many of the greatest stories in both film and comic books that I have seen produced have focused on these huge real life events but allowed the audience to become more involved. Thanks to you I'll have to look this one up myself.

[Amanda]

This was an amazing cartoon. Cory found a real 'gem' of a cartoon, but 'Barefoot Gen' really managed to focus on something that these days is lost on many kids. There are not enough young role models who have struggled through such a difficult time to show that they can, indeed, grown up to be good responsible adults. Good for you for putting this up, its great!