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Hiroshima, only days before the end of the war, the big bomb hasn't yet
been dropped and so far, the Allies have rather refrained from bombing the
city. 6-year old Gen is living a relatively happy life in the city with
his family, for him and his younger brother Shinji the hardships of the
war, including food rationing and hiding in the bomb shelter every other
day, are more of a game than anything else ... but then the bomb drops,
and suddenly Hiroshima is no more. Gen and his pregnant mother have
somehow survived the ordeal, but they had to watch the rest of the family
including Sinji die in flames ...
Now they have to make a living, without food or shelter, in a town
littered with hundreds of thousands of dead and dieing, and without any
proper medical facilities - and mother is coming down any day now ...
Eventually, young Gen himself has to help his mother give birth to
little Tomoko, but that's not where the problems end: Since mother hasn't
enough food for even herself, she can't produce milk for the baby, and the
baby gets worse and worse ...
Gen though is not one to give up that easily, even if his hair already
falls out from radiation poisoning - and eventually he finds a hidden rice
depot somewhere in the city that will last him and mum for quite some time
...
Eventually, Gen and his mother build themselves a shack, and they even
take in an orphaned boy, Ryuta, who is the splitting image of Gen's dead
brother Shinji - and life starts getting normal again. Then though mother
runs out of milk for little Tomoko, and now the two boys have to look for
work in order to earn money to buy milk - and eventually are hired to take
care of Seiji, a painter who has been so affected by radiation poisoning
he has lost his will to live - and now uses the boys as an outlet for his
frustrations ... until Gen can't take it anymore and lashes back at Seiji,
virtually beating the will to live back into him, and this way he earns
Seiji's respect, and when Seiji even starts painting again, Gen and Ryuta
get paid tenfold of what was agreed upon.
Gen and Ryuta arrive back at mother's with more milk than the baby can
drink in a month, but by now Tomoko has already died ...
The film ends on a happy note though when the boys discover that the
corn starts growing again, and even Gen's hair is growing back ...
Based on Keiji Nakazawa's true life experiences, Barefoot Gen
turns ot to be a very touching film that without falling into the trap of
unreflected anti-Americanism shows the bombing of Hiroshima from the
innocent victim's point of view and this way delivers a compelling
anti-war message and shows the horrors of war better than any
matter-of-fact documentary could. Of course, besides all the unsettling
pictures and nightmare imagery, the film is not completely free from
clichés and the occasional kitsch-scene (especially the ending), but that
does hardly distract from the generic power of the film.
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amazon.co.uk
amazon.de
eThaiCD.com
