Shadow of Fire (2023)Tsukamoto At His Most… Hopeful? (Review)

While he doesn’t have the same cut-through of his halycon days with Tetsuo, Bullet Ballet or A Snake of June, Shinya Tsukamoto is undoubtedly one of the more consistent filmmakers in Japan. This is partly due to that movie industry not being as buoyant as it once was, but also because he’s a director who’s always embodied the Punk DIY ethic of his early films like (The) Adventures of Electric Rod Boy (1987), and Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989). While the aesthetics of his contemporary films are worlds away from his earlier works, that ethic is still there – the proof of this coming from his continued focus on micro-budgeted productions, which is where we find Shadow of Fire. His new movie is fresh off a UK tour with The Japan Foundation (in association with Third Window Films), and appears to be a spiritual successor to his 2014 anti-war movie, Fires on the Plain. 

Originally a semi-autobiographical book by Shōhei Ōoka that was published in 1951, Fires on the Plain was controversially adapted in 1959 by Kon Ichikawa before Tsukamoto decided to apply his unique brand of nihilism to the story in 2014. Set in The Philippines during the final days of the Second World War, a Japanese soldier experiences the harrowingly grim and brutal collapse of the military, and the fallout that comes with it. In a video introduction that preceded Shadow of Fire during its tour, Tsukamoto stated that he was inspired to make the film while on the sets of Fires on the Plain. The previous film was about the military at the end of war, while the current one is about the effects of war on the civilians and the next generation, and contrary to what you might believe, this is about as hopeful as the director has ever been.

It’s still grim, but there’s light piercing those jet-black clouds. 

Shadow of Fire opens in a burned-out house that was “lucky” enough to survive being firebombed, and the sole inhabitant (Shuri), who makes ends meet by running a dead-end bar/escort service. Beleaguered by the sweltering heat, extreme hunger and her personal demons, she spends most of her time sleeping when she has no visitors. She has a cursed existence as she claws her way from one day to the next until one day, just before one of her few regulars arrives, a boy no older than 7 (Ouga Tsukao), sneaks into her home to hide from a trader from whom he stole some food. That Kid (or Boy, he’s never addressed as anything else), is our window into this meditation on the emotional wreckage caused by the Second World War – the shadows of fire. Together with a young teacher (Mirai Moriyama), who fought in the war, The woman and the Kid form a found family for a while, but this relative calm is destroyed by a gunshot in the night, triggering a violent episode of PTSD in the young teacher. The Kid Later gets a job with a mysterious man (Hiroki Kono), who suffers from emotional scars due to things he did during the war. 

Two traits of Tsukamoto which go most under-rated are his acting and ability to get great performances from his actors, and he’s only gotten better with age. In Shadow of Fire, Shuri is the shining star as a woman who has effectively lost everything, and it would be all too easy for her to play it “sad”, but as-Tsukamoto showed in 2011’s Kotoko – when it comes to depicting mental illness, he doesn’t take the easy way out. Shuri’s performs the role of a dejected woman well, but the sparkle that returns to her eyes when their found family takes shape reveals an actor in peak form, the slightest glimmer of light shining out like a beacon in the darkest of places.

Recently, Tsukamoto’s direction and scripts have a habit of affecting me on a primal level because he looks beyond the surface, freeing his actors to attain a level of expression that they wouldn’t enjoy with other directors – Japanese dramas are very reserved after all. He allows his cast to go beyond screen acting to a place of real emotions, and because the monologues are within earshot of the Kid, they become more effective. I counted two occasions where Shadow of Fire made me cry.

Others have compared this to the notorious Russian Suffer-a-Thon Come and See, which doesn’t quite cut it for me. Elem Klimov’s 1985 movie is an assault on your emotions, and if this was Tsukamoto at his most nihilistic then maybe, but this is a new hopeful version of the filmmaker. The world is still horrific, and the insanity of war has infected the land like an almighty pandemic, but the lengths gone to protect the Kid speak volumes. Through his subtextually ever-green script, the suggestion here is that there’s always hope for a better tomorrow with the next generation, and it may be just a glimmer, but it doesn’t need to be much for it to stand out in such grim circumstances.

Outside the small house there’s a market street and a house in the forest, making expenses minimal – especially with no effects beyond squibs and a broken window. It’s an ethos which translates to him continuing to use handheld digital video where both the technology and his skills have developed massively. The multi-hyphenate was never the best cinematographer, but his shot selection and framing have improved exponentially simply because of stabilisation. This means his handheld camera work is more naturalistic and less of a sadistic punishment (looking at Kotoko, where I wished he invested in a decent tripod). Shadow of Fire also represents the first end-to-end production since the passing of his regular composer and longest-serving collaborator, Chu Ishikawa.

The specific insanity of war ensures that Shadow of Fire will make your blood run cold with its grim study of wartime grief. Yet, the veteran Japanese director is at his humblest and most forgiving, marking a new era for the former king of Cyberpunk and Body Horror. Simply put, this recent Japan Foundation movie is one of my stand-outs of 2024.   

Rob’s Archive – Shadow of Fire (2023)