When is a World War II epic not a World War II epic? When it’s Onoda: 10,000 Nights in Jungle, a story that is all the more unbelievable when you consider it is 100% true. Or as close as possible, with creative embellishments to make it palatable as a big-screen drama. Arthur Harari’s breakout hit was the toast of the Cannes during last year’s Festival, competing in the Un Certain Regard Section. In April 2022, this case of a real-life stranger than fiction is to be released in cinemas thanks to Third Window Films.

Co-Written by Harari and heavily based on Bernard Cendron and Gérard Chenu’s 1974 biography Onoda, seul en Guerre Dans la jungle – a book which saw Cendron interview the titular subject before he passed away in 2014. Onoda: 10,000 Nights in the Jungle adapts the incredible story of Hiroo Onoda. 

As the film tells it, he desperately wanted to join the Japanese War effort as a pilot, only he didn’t get the green light. Desperate and deflated, he gets a second chance thanks to a fracture cell but only if he, along with many others, successfully negotiates arduous reconditioning training. He is stationed on a Pacific island in 1944 in a war effort that sees him join a group battered by American forces, driven to starvation and desperation. Any military movements result in staggering defeat, with one scene seeing a squad burned to death. Then, when on their rounds, a group of locals tell the few soldiers left standing in broken English that the war is over. But they don’t surrender. Onoda and three others take it upon themselves to set up Guerilla operations on the Island for a greater war effort yet to come. On the instruction drilled into Onoda of “never surrender, no matter what happens” – whether, through eventual surrender or fights with locals, Onoda remained on the Island for 27 years. He was known in Japan as the last soldier fighting. 

From training to the front line and back again, the first forty minutes fall firmly into the camp of the war movie. After, the pace and volume slow down considerably turning it into a survivalist movie. And that is the first hurdle Onoda: 10,000 Nights in the Jungle presents, this runs nearly 3 hours long, and these are a slow 3 hours at that. You could debate that the film is too long, but take a moment to consider that this is 27 years of a man’s life. Rushing is a service to no one other than the impatient, so credit has to go to the director for playing the long game. The canvas, this character study, delves into the minds of those left behind, the mental gymnastics they perform to justify such a long tenure and the conflict that arises between Akatsu (Kai Inowaki), Shimada (Shinsuke Kato), Kozuka (Yuya Matsuura) and Onoda himself (Yuya Endo). That alongside more basic facets of surviving like building huts and finding food.  

 To be completely transparent, I was one of those impatient, wanting the movie to get to “the point”, as, for a while, there’s an awful lot of surviving and arguing. Then the youngest of the group, Akatsu, leaves, disappearing into the jungle – a deserter in the eyes of the group. That is the mark of a good survivalist drama or any long movie, for that matter. Harai knows when to shake things up, keeping them interesting. The next telling junction happens with the sole attempt to get Onoda and Kozuka to come home – it fails, but not as you’d expect. The fallout of that failure is tragic if only to cement how deep their paranoia and belief have sunk in. Then, there’s a time skip, the most devastating use of the time jump I’ve seen in a good long time. That last run with Kanji Tsuda (Old Onoda) and Tetsuya Chiba (Old Kozuka) cements the tragedy of this story, by this point in time – the men who they used to be are long gone, all that remains is a promise long forgotten and a purpose never to be fulfilled. But they are trapped, they’ve been on that remote, albeit beautiful, island so long there’s no way home. It was around then that the film sank its teeth in and everything that it was striving for hit home – making the previous impatience, fickle. Wanting the results without watching time destroy them would be failing to meet the movie on its own terms.

The cinematography by Tom Harari captures the majesty of the tropical island, and the performances by the entire ensemble are uniformly strong. A particular note for Kanji Tsuda as old Hiroo Onoda. His vacant stare is the accumulation of his life. There’s a soulful longing in his eyes for both his lost friends and his now alien homeland. When the tourist finds him in the final act, he is a ghost out of time and with that, the tragedy is complete. Of course, the cast is strong across the board, but the sense of longing etched upon his face is the cream on this excellent cake. You could debate that I have spoiled Onoda: 10,000 Nights in the Jungle, and I don’t believe that to be true. Harari’s movie is about a man’s misspent life and all its folly, there is no destination, and there’s barely a plot either. This is a pure journey and if you get the chance to see this on a big screen, pounce on it. It may test your patience, but you’ll not forget it anytime soon.

Keep an eye on Arthur Harari, he’s got some future ahead of him.

a Bluray + VOD release date is set for May

Rob’s Archive – Onoda: 10,000 Nights in the Jungle (2021)