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Critics Consensus: An achingly sad anti-war film, Grave of the Fireflies is one of Studio Ghibli's most profoundly beautiful, haunting works.
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Critic Consensus: An achingly sad anti-war film, Grave of the Fireflies is one of Studio Ghibli's most profoundly beautiful, haunting works.
View All Grave of the Fireflies (Hotaru no haka) News
All Critics (36) | Top Critics (2) | Fresh (35) | Rotten (1) | DVD (6)
Writer-director Isao Takahata, a frequent collaborator of Miyazaki's at Studio Ghibli, adapted a partly autobiographical novel by Akiyuki Nosaka, and his handling of the tragic story is masterfully understated.
An emotional experience so powerful that it forces a rethinking of animation.
This film isn't easy to watch but it's essential viewing among the great works of animation--or really of all film, for that matter.
Once seen, this is seared in your heart, deep as your worst relationship break-up.
Isao Takahata's masterpiece is one of the most profound anti-war statements ever brought to cinema
...a well-made and heartfelt drama that's just not as engrossing as it should be.
Such odd hopefulness, flitting around a child, mixed with the overwhelmingly sad, pervades Isao Takahata's film. And all around Seita and Setsuko, nature, in the face of human destruction and tragedy, persists in its beauty.
The stylised images suit the simplicity and gravity of a grim story of love, sacrifice and survival in the face of adult indifference and cruelty.
We're so used to seeing the human spirit triumph. Here, we're allowed to understand how it might fail.
There are magical moments of natural beauty and childish delight, too - which only make the tragedy even more harrowing.
The idea that "War is Hell" has almost become something of a climatic cliché, but Takahata's film explores this well-worn slogan from new, exciting and harrowing angles.
Isao Takahata's powerful anti-war movie is all the more harrowing for the care we invest in its beautifully drawn children.
This work follows a brother and sister trying to survive in Japan near the end of WW2. It walks a very careful line as it begs sympathy for Japan (through the eyes of innocence, of children) for a war that they initiated. The close relationship between the children is certainly moving and effectively works to engage sympathy, but I couldn't help but wonder for say similar children, say of Nanking for instance. A tough watch.
Super Reviewer
A devastating animation that never holds back in its haunting depiction of the horrors of war and the people whose lives are destroyed by it, and the result simply ranks among one of the most powerful anti-war films to be ever experienced - animated or not.
One of the saddest films of all time and one of the greatest anti-war films ever created (even if it wasn't director Isao Takahata's exact intentions but that is a different discussion entirely and is irrelevant to this review). A harrowing tale of innocent children caught up in the terribly indifferent effects of wartime. This is no heroic tale of differing ideologies and factions, this is a very emotionally-taxing tale set in the waning days of WWII that will leave you feeling depressed as a brother and sister are physically and emotionally worn-away by the cold world that deprived them of their parents. Be sure to have plenty of tissues upon viewing this tear-jerking masterpiece. Can't believe this was released together with 'My Neighbor Totoro' (practically the happiest movie ever made). Talk about a bi-polar double-bill.
without question one of the saddest films i have ever seen. its films like this that have contributed so much to my near pacifism. the world is so dark, and life is so fragile, and often times its the most innocent among us that suffer the most. incredibly moving.
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