Post by Keith Heitmann on Apr 30, 2007 10:20:32 GMT -5
I recently stumbled across the official website for this Japanese produced film that apparantly came out back in 2005. I had never heard of it before.
I managed to find a copy and watch it, luckily it was subtitled in english as the entire film was in Japanese, of course.
As the title suggests the movie revolves around the ill-fated super battleship the "Yamato" and some of her crew. The story is told through long flashback sequences on the 60th anniversary of the Yamato's sinking on April 7, 1945.
One of her ex-crew, now an old man is hired by the daughter of one of the men he served with on the Yamato, but didn't know that this woman's father survived the sinking. The old man runs a old fishing boat and is haunted by survival of the sinking and the loss of all his crewmates. The woman hires the old man and his young teenage crewmember to taker her out to the exact longitude and lattitude of the Yamato's sinking.
During the flashback parts of the story you see the old man as a ordinary and very young 15 year old seaman recruit being taken aboard the new battleship Yamato as one of her crew. The story goes on to illustrate the life aboard a IJN warship of the time and the friendships made amongs the officers and crew of the ship who in the end are ordered into final suicide sorte against the American attack at Okinawa but get caught at sea unprotected by aircover by U.S. Navy warplanes.
The action sequences are very bloody. Planes strafing the decks tear the crew manning the light AA guns to pieces and blood flies everywhere.
The CGI recreation of the Yamato itself is not the best. For the date of this movie it seems a little "flat" and lifeless and the CGI graphic effects were all too obvious in some loving screenshots of the ship underway.
The attacks by the U.S. planes are almost remmeniscent of the planes you see in those cheesey 1950-1960 Godzilla movies of the past. They make accute angle flat turns like they are on rails just to keep them in the frame of the shot. The planes themselves look passible but their flight characteristics border on the comical. In one scene a U.S. torpedo bomber drops a torpedo against the Yamato, but during the process you can see the edges around the aircraft look like it was almost pasted into the shot over an seascape, and to make it even more surreal the plane and torpedo as it falls seem to do a small jump "up" as if they were going over a speedbump as the seascape behind them remains stationary.
The mediocre CGI aside, the story wasn't too bad. Young men learning to fight and live under wartime conditions, home leave, saying "goodbye" when they know that they may not comeback in their last mission are all pretty standard war movie storystock. The combat sequences are relatively short for a two hour movie, but very intense. Much of the fighting sequences focuses on the light AA gun crew manned by the main character and his friends as they start to die one by one.
The Japanses psyche loves stories of heroic futility. The Japanese as a culuture generally prefer fatalistic storylines over happy endings. The heroes always die or are tormented in some way as every one around them also dies, etc. Just look a the recent movie from Clint Eastwood, "Letters from Iwo Jima" the second half of the movie "Flags of Our Fathers" about the attack on Iwo Jima told from the Japanese perspective. Very fataslistic in its point of view.
Japanese stories also seem to go overboard on the super patriotic love of homeland and Empire. There is lots of patriotic grunting about fighting to the death, etc. I'm sure that many Japanese servicemen felt that way, and even though I've seen it before in movies about Japan during the war, it never fails to seem put on for the sake of the camera.
The Japanese of today never seem to forget this particular ship and have raised it almost to a level of religion as far as I can tell. As I understand it the name "Yamato" was namesake of Japan, so the ship is essentially named after the country.
If you have some spare change, some time, and are looking for a war movie to watch, see if you can find a copy of "Yamato" somewhere and rent it. It's not the greatest war movie ever made, but it's not the worst either. It's interesting enough to watch just for the fact that it is told entirely from the Japanese perspective.
For more info about the Yamato check Wikipedia, or Google the name for more sites. The PBS show NOVA did a documentary on the sinking of the Yamato in 2005 called "Sinking the Supership."
I managed to find a copy and watch it, luckily it was subtitled in english as the entire film was in Japanese, of course.
As the title suggests the movie revolves around the ill-fated super battleship the "Yamato" and some of her crew. The story is told through long flashback sequences on the 60th anniversary of the Yamato's sinking on April 7, 1945.
One of her ex-crew, now an old man is hired by the daughter of one of the men he served with on the Yamato, but didn't know that this woman's father survived the sinking. The old man runs a old fishing boat and is haunted by survival of the sinking and the loss of all his crewmates. The woman hires the old man and his young teenage crewmember to taker her out to the exact longitude and lattitude of the Yamato's sinking.
During the flashback parts of the story you see the old man as a ordinary and very young 15 year old seaman recruit being taken aboard the new battleship Yamato as one of her crew. The story goes on to illustrate the life aboard a IJN warship of the time and the friendships made amongs the officers and crew of the ship who in the end are ordered into final suicide sorte against the American attack at Okinawa but get caught at sea unprotected by aircover by U.S. Navy warplanes.
The action sequences are very bloody. Planes strafing the decks tear the crew manning the light AA guns to pieces and blood flies everywhere.
The CGI recreation of the Yamato itself is not the best. For the date of this movie it seems a little "flat" and lifeless and the CGI graphic effects were all too obvious in some loving screenshots of the ship underway.
The attacks by the U.S. planes are almost remmeniscent of the planes you see in those cheesey 1950-1960 Godzilla movies of the past. They make accute angle flat turns like they are on rails just to keep them in the frame of the shot. The planes themselves look passible but their flight characteristics border on the comical. In one scene a U.S. torpedo bomber drops a torpedo against the Yamato, but during the process you can see the edges around the aircraft look like it was almost pasted into the shot over an seascape, and to make it even more surreal the plane and torpedo as it falls seem to do a small jump "up" as if they were going over a speedbump as the seascape behind them remains stationary.
The mediocre CGI aside, the story wasn't too bad. Young men learning to fight and live under wartime conditions, home leave, saying "goodbye" when they know that they may not comeback in their last mission are all pretty standard war movie storystock. The combat sequences are relatively short for a two hour movie, but very intense. Much of the fighting sequences focuses on the light AA gun crew manned by the main character and his friends as they start to die one by one.
The Japanses psyche loves stories of heroic futility. The Japanese as a culuture generally prefer fatalistic storylines over happy endings. The heroes always die or are tormented in some way as every one around them also dies, etc. Just look a the recent movie from Clint Eastwood, "Letters from Iwo Jima" the second half of the movie "Flags of Our Fathers" about the attack on Iwo Jima told from the Japanese perspective. Very fataslistic in its point of view.
Japanese stories also seem to go overboard on the super patriotic love of homeland and Empire. There is lots of patriotic grunting about fighting to the death, etc. I'm sure that many Japanese servicemen felt that way, and even though I've seen it before in movies about Japan during the war, it never fails to seem put on for the sake of the camera.
The Japanese of today never seem to forget this particular ship and have raised it almost to a level of religion as far as I can tell. As I understand it the name "Yamato" was namesake of Japan, so the ship is essentially named after the country.
If you have some spare change, some time, and are looking for a war movie to watch, see if you can find a copy of "Yamato" somewhere and rent it. It's not the greatest war movie ever made, but it's not the worst either. It's interesting enough to watch just for the fact that it is told entirely from the Japanese perspective.
For more info about the Yamato check Wikipedia, or Google the name for more sites. The PBS show NOVA did a documentary on the sinking of the Yamato in 2005 called "Sinking the Supership."