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44 out of 64 people found the following review useful: Very powerful film, and revolutionary, too, 20 January 2006 Author: taiheiyokid from Japan
I am an American PhD student based in both Japan and Micronesia doing extensive fieldwork with the survivors of the Pacific War in the Pacific Islands and Japan--as well as the families of war dead. Since I have been really involved most recently with the families of soldiers and sailors who died in the Pacific, I naturally wanted to see this movie.I found myself with tears in my eyes from the very beginning, because it was as if all the black and white photographs I have been generously shown by these families were coming to life--the young faces of these sailors, frightened, proud, and eager to live up to their responsibilities, were very true to what I sense was really happening in the 1940s. I have to say, unlike the very propagandist flavor of many American films about the Pacific War, including most recently 'Pearl Harbor,' this film really delves into the traumatic aspects of masculinity in general and having to live up to "being a man" in Japan just as much as it celebrates the humanity of the people involved. Many American films, with the exception of 'Saving Private Ryan' and several films about Vietnam, tend to stick to very comic-like stark depictions of heroes and villains and an overall sense of being "victimized" by the enemy. Here, the enemy is not the United States but rather masculinity and male pride itself, as well as the whole tragic story they create.As such, it is a welcome remedy to way too much American-biased victory narratives that obscure the face of the Japanese military, and to films that portray menacing, dehumanized battalions of Japanese soldiers advancing forth without any legitimate context of their own. We see in this film the faces of these young men and understand what situation they were coming from.That said, clearly the film was trying to be sensitive to war bereaved and to the official narratives of Japanese pretexts for war, and in that sense I feel they overdid it a little. We don't get a sense, for instance, about Japan's colonial presence throughout Asia and the Pacific--only the vague notion that Japan somehow got involved in war. Still, this isn't really a film about why the war happened, but rather about how it was to live and fight in the immediate time preceding Japanese surrender. In that sense, I do want to make the critique that this film really could have done with even MORE contextualization and solid research of popular Japanese culture at the time, because this would have added even more to its convincing sense of reality. For instance, the soundtrack would have been greatly enhanced with some of the evocative marching music and the ballads on the radio in the 1930s and 1940s that encouraged young men to join the navy and go south to the South Seas. These songs are still sung even by the bereaved families who go back to visit the places where their loved ones died, so it would have been quite powerful if we got to hear them throughout the film. The absence of small details like this, some rather poorly-imitated Japanese regional dialects, and some of the melodramatic overacting by a few members of the cast, detracted somewhat from the overall production. But in general, this is a very fine film, extremely well acted (and compassionately so) by its cast. I have been reading a book about the film in Japanese and it's fascinating to learn how so many of the cast worked directly with Japanese veterans and the bereaved families in order to develop their characters and their behavior. So in many respects this film is not only based on the realities of battle (which are really just the backdrop) but on the real life realities of war and on being a young man in the Japanese Imperial Navy in 1944-1945. In all, it's an extremely meaningful film that needs to be distributed widely through the world. I know there is a lot of resistance to its release in China and Korea, understandably, but I think this is a portrait of what was going on for Japanese at the time and as such could even work as a tool to facilitate better understanding in these countries. It is essential that more compassionate films like this are made that go on to address the complexity and horror of what happened in Asia and the Pacific-- to the people whose lives were colonized and ruined by Japanese aggression, but at least it's a start. It appears to me that Japanese popular culture is finally ready to address the war in all of its ugliness and begin to heal some of these old wounds.
14 out of 17 people found the following review useful: My take on "Yamato", 24 February 2007 Author: wanderingstar from Toronto
I am almost through a great book on the history of Japan in WWII. The naval battles are fascinating to read about, and so when I saw this movie in the local Asian mall I picked it up.Yamato (the old name for Japan) has good and bad points. Starting with the good - I find the story fascinating, how the remainder of the Second fleet made a run for Okinawa on a mission that everyone knew was suicide due to lack of air support (Japan's air force had been finally crushed at Saipan). Some of the acting was great; I thought Uchida really stood out. As far as I can tell the film was very historically accurate. Some of the insights into "bushido" were interesting, especially the admiral's explanation of bushido vs. English chivalry. And some of the effects were pretty good too.On the bad side... the film had kind of a made-for-TV movie feel. As I said, some of the effects were good, others were far from great. The director shied away from showing the large sections of the ship, or the whole ship, maybe because of lack of budget - but I found myself really wanting to see those shots of this 65,000 ton superbattleship. It was obvious the whole film was made in a studio. They really should have invested in substantial steel tubes for the anti-aircraft guns, the fact that they jittered around like toys bothered me. Also in the silent dialog scenes, there should have been an omnipresent rumble of the ship's engines to add to the illusion that we are on the largest battleship in the world.It wasn't great, but I enjoyed it anyway, and anyone else who is interested in Japanese naval history I think will also enjoy it despite its shortcomings.
11 out of 13 people found the following review useful: Ambitious yet disappointing, 15 February 2007 Author: Mark from Sweden
*** This review may contain spoilers ***
I guess the ambition of this film is to show the personal drama taking place alongside the big drama of the last ditch demise of the great "Yamato", and from this point of view the film performs well but expectable. There is the tragedy of young lives being lost for a lost cause, the psychological wounds of the survivors that never heals. There's also the mandatory journey to the spot of the disaster made on an anniversary by one of the survivors and a daughter to another, maybe inspired by J. Cameron's "Titanic". Factually, though, the film is a failure. It would of course be impossible to make a replica of the ship, so it has been recreated digitally, and to excellent effect in the few scenes you actually view the whole ship, or most of it, making its way through the seas. Those moments alone are worth the price of the ticket. But the budget didn't cover much more than that. The mock-up of certain parts of the ship look just like mock-up, we don't even get to know about one light cruiser and several destroyers that followed "Yamato" to disaster (most of them were also sunk) and we don't see one single US ship (aircraft from at least 12 American aircraft carriers participated in fending off the Japanese). What's worse, we are not told how the battle developed or what tactics were used by the Japanese task force nor by the US air squadrons. The great battleship was eventually sunk after being hit by many torpedoes and several big, armor-piercing bombs, but most of what we see is low flying US aircraft strafing the crew and hitting the decks with small caliber ordnance, causing incredible carnage. The strafing did take place on several occasions during the day, the ship was also hit by small rockets from F4U Corsair fighters, but it all had marginal effect. The huge 456 mm guns are seen firing away towards the approaching aircraft, and while this in fact did happen, one couldn't stay exposed on deck, as the enormous blast would probably kill or at least severely injure you, so crew were forbidden on the outside on such occasions. All in all, the never-ending screams of dying seamen don't make up for the lack of most of other angles of this last major battle of WWII. All in all, some 3000 Japanese lives were lost on the "Yamato" alone, plus more than a thousand more on the accompanying ships, without disturbing the US Okinawa operations in any way. Some figures are mentioned in the film but the tragedy of this sacrifice in not fully pointed out. During the day the US lost 12 airmen and 10 airplanes.
17 out of 26 people found the following review useful: Good war film that questions the need to fight to the end while paying tribute to fallen comrades, 14 October 2006 Author: dbborroughs from Glen Cove, New York
Huge scale tale of the battleship Yamato and its crew. from 1942 to its sinking. Told in flashback as memories are provoked in a survivor by a woman, the daughter of another survivor, wanting to visit the final resting place on the 60th anniversary of its sinking. This is a story of youthful idealism tinged and changed by the course of war and a culture that celebrates death in battle as something glorious. It examines why men fight and what can we hope to get out of war.This is a very good and moving film. For all of the clichés (is there a well worn plot device it doesn't have?) it does manage to touch the heart and the head. We really do care about the characters we see up on the screen, and what happens to them, death in a foolish adventure, moves us. At the same time we get to see the waste that is war and was the Japanese war effort in the final days of World War Two. Its made clear that the fight to the end mentality leaves no room for tomorrow. Its best expressed in a simple scene on the bridge of the ship. One of the officers is asked to explain the difference between chivalry, the Western code of war, and Bushido, the Japanese code. Bushido, he says is preparing for a death with no reward, Chivalry is trying to live a noble life. Its a difference that all of the men can see but which very few ever get the chance to live by. Even the survivors, the old man essentially telling the story, is haunted by the fact that he lived and everyone else died.As the film asks plainly, if we all die, who's going to be around to take advantage of our sacrifices? Its a question that needs to be asked in this age of suicide bombers. There is a great many other thematic threads running through this film that lift it out of the typical war movie pile.The cast is top notch. They manage to take what is often a clichéd script and to infuse it with the power of reality. Modern sequences aside, you care for these people and you are moved by what happens to them. The tears that well up in the final modern scenes come from the fact that the cast of the war sections is so good that you carry over the emotion. I wish that the modern sequences had given the actors something to do other than simply push the story into action.Technically the film is very impressive. The Yamato, is monster of a ship and its plain to see that great care was taken in recreating it. Its a beautiful movie to look at with the entire film having a wonderful sense of place and time. The two battle scenes are graphic in a way that I've never seen in a naval war film (if you don't like blood you may want to look elsewhere.) This is going to be something to rattle the windows with on DVD.If the film has any real flaw thats its length. The film is about two and a half hours long and to be honest it probably could have been shorter. I was getting fidgety during some of it. Its not that its bad, its just that the films pace allows you too much time to dwell on some of the by the numbers construction of the plot so you just want the film to get to the next bit (what another tearful goodbye?). It doesn't kill the film, it just makes it hard to truly get lost in the story.If you like war films, or good movies this is one to keep an eye out for. Just be ready to do a little digging since I'm not sure if this is going to get a regular release outside of Asia.
7 out of 9 people found the following review useful: A powerful film that really drives home the humanity of war, 12 June 2008 Author: Kil_Killion from Japan
I am so disappointed to see some posters turning their reviews into cold historical commentary. Did this film not teach you anything? Having been to Hiroshima and the memorial, as well as the beautiful Miyajima, and having lived here in Japan for a number of years and fallen in love with this country, its people and its culture, I couldn't help but be immensely moved by this film. The film steers well clear of overly political and historical commentary and focuses on the young sailors and their loved ones. The hardship of the Japanese in the second world war was not unlike any other nations' peoples' hardship. Their loved ones went to war and never returned; they lost their livelihoods and what they loved; they were powerless to the whims of their leaders.This film shows People. People in tragic times. People fighting for their loves and their lives. Whether it is Yamato, Saving Private Ryan, The Thin Red Line, Brotherhood, Stone's trilogy, Eastwood's duo of films, etc, it comes down to people trying to live. So many people have used their reviews to damn the gov't of the Showa period, to damn Bushido or to damn Shinto. I ask you, what is the point of doing so for a film that strove so hard to sever all of those things away in favour of a human story?There seems to be an attitude that since the Japanese were the aggressors, they aren't allowed to explore their history without profuse apologising, self deprecation or flagellation. Whichever way you paint the picture, all combatants have blood on their hands: the blood of fathers, mothers, children and grandparents. Does it matter what choices their leaders made without them? After years of heroic US war films, it is ironic that this moving film, Yamato, be raked over coals for inaccuracies or romanticism. Have you not paid attention for decades of Hollywood war film?On a technical note, the film's visual effects are excellent for a non-Hollywood film. I wouldn't be surprised if Yamato was one of the most expensive Japanese films ever made. While making an ocean going battleship replica was not an option, the sets, miniatures and CGI create a very gritty and realistic feeling of being aboard the fated ship.Musically the film is very striking and has some memorable themes throughout. The sound track is also superb with excellent separation in the 5.1 channels. The battle scenes are especially vivid in their aural presentation. The amount of heart, work and effort that went into the film is clear from the exceptional cast, sound and competent visuals and their passionate and honest performances and work. This is definitely a film for the world to see. It is not a war film about "war"; it is a war film about love. The message rings loud and clear until the final note of the closing credit's song.
20 out of 36 people found the following review useful: True thing... that hurts, 12 February 2006 Author: (yukiyasu_murakami)
Screenplay of this movie (of course in Japanese) is excellent and I was enough convinced by its story - why we are living, who fought for the country. It was great tragedy that only 15-17 years old boys required to fight in the war without knowing the meaning/reason of life. This movie (or original book written by Jun Henmi) is now my recommendation to know there were people who fought for our country.I am not racist nor nationalist. I also am not right wing. I oppose to any wars by any mean. But, I respect the men who fought for us and it is sad that we don't know much about the fact we are living on where these men protected.I voted this as "5" for actors/actress are not that super... Theme song as the same... Understanding they did their best, but level of acting is miserable. The battle scenes are great.Sometime it's too stereotype to illustrate the story (ie. Geisha & Japanese Gamble ... that's almost the all the Japanese movie does).
3 out of 3 people found the following review useful: It did go out with a bang anyway..., 12 February 2007 Author: Enchorde from Sweden
Recap: Katsumi Kamio is not very old, just 15 years old, but with his nation Japan in war he decides to follow his brother and join the Imperial Navy. He gets posted on the pride of the navy, the world's largest and most modern battleship Yamato. The young recruits are convinced and determine to change the tide of war with the powerful ship or die a glorious death with it. Unfortunately, although the ship is newly built it is hopelessly obsolete without a fighter escort. Kamio, posted as an anti-aircraft gunner sees this firsthand. 60 years later, the daughter of a friend from Yamato comes to Kamio and wants to hire Kamio and his boat to go to the location of the recently rediscovered Yamato. The trip is not only a trip out to ocean but also a trip back in history and Kamio's memories.Comments: This is not a war-movie in that way that it focuses and follows the Yamato into battle and adrenalin-high scenes. No, this is the kind of war-movie that follows Kamio that finds himself on the Yamato and his friends, and the companionship that develops on the ship. The idea that to die a glorious death is foremost in almost everyone's minds, to bring glory to the country, the Navy and your family. To survive is shameful. Those two feelings, those ideas come to a hard collision when Yamato is sent on a final suicide mission to attack the invading American forces. Also the mission, as pointed out in the movie, the mission marks an end to an era, international and Japanese. Yamato was the crown in the line of battleships but hopelessly lost without air support.This is a remembrance and a way to live with the effects of the Second World War. The bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki are not mentioned much but those, and all other deaths of the war hangs like a shadow over the movie.Although it is not action-packed (although with a few blood-filled gruesome battles), quite long and the story known it never becomes dull. The companionship and the history of Kamio and his friends are really intriguing. And somehow you feel the weight of the movie, and it is definitely not only for Japanese.6/10
4 out of 6 people found the following review useful: A beautiful movie about an immense unnecessary tragedy, 14 April 2008 Author: Robert Veenenberg from Netherlands
The destruction of the giant battleship by overwhelming Allied air power following the destruction from the air of 3 previous giant Axis battleships (Bismarck, Musashi and Tirpitz) was a gigantic tragedy of common enlisted soldiers defending their "fatherland".The mission accomplished nothing but another one-sided slaughter of "obedient soldiers". This is the real tragedy of men educated for obedience. Germans and Japanese alike.And they were killed with millions against overwhelming (and technically also superior) powers by an opportunistic and docile dictatorship, leaving behind millions of sorrowing wives and children which never saw much of their fathers.Otoko-tachi no Yamato shows us the common Japanese soldiers as human beings. No propaganda at all, unlike so many US war movies.Its counterpart was the German movie "Das Boot". The difference is that in Germany the process of showing World War II as it was started earlier than in Japan. Even the horrendous loss of the Wilhelm Gustloff (10.000 dead)has been shown in a movie on the German television recently. In Japan the horrors of WWII finally are being shown to the public. While Germany feels "very guilty" for many decades, this process in Japan not really has been started yet.
7 out of 12 people found the following review useful: An honest effort, worthwhile viewing but without any real greatness, 1 October 2006 Author: thewakinghour from Japan
I was prepared to watch, and be annoyed at, a typical sentimentally self-justifying movie about the brave and suffering Japanese, unfortunate victims in a war foisted upon them, ala nearly every TV drama I have ever seen touching on the war here in Japan. And, to some degree, this is such a movie.That criticism noted, the film does not shirk much, certainly no more than some Hollywood Spielberg vehicle, from touching on some of the realities of the Yamato's story: the brutality of the discipline, the bitterness of the divide between the men who justifiably resented being sent on a useless suicide mission and those willing to fight to maintain the pretense it was anything else, and the unpleasant horror of the battle itself, which moved me deeply in that, whatever bravery was being shown, it had no even symbolic value.The acting is good, the special effects passable (yet strangely effective because they were clearly effects), and the direction decent. In its way I found it far, far moving effective in portraying war than the "we can be heroes" efforts of better Hollywood. No one would willingly support a war such as this.Off topic? To speak up in this, hopefully very atypical, case, the voting on this movie, at this point, is a disgrace, with nearly all 1s and 10s. Why bother to grind the stupid Yamatodashii!/anti-Japan axes in such a pointless, if revealing fashion. 90% of the "reviewers" outta be ashamed of themselves.
12 out of 22 people found the following review useful: Saving Petty Officer Ryuko, 16 July 2007 Author: TrevorAclea from London, England
Leaving a trail of controversy in its insubstantial wake, Yamato turns out not to be the dangerous far right bit of revisionism excusing Japan's conduct in WW2 many Western pundits have claimed but instead a horribly clichéd attempt to fuse Titanic with Saving Private Ryan and ending up with something distinctly lukewarm instead. Yes, it ignores the realities of the dictatorship on the home front that drove Japan to disaster during its scenes ashore and doesn't seem to have more than a passing interest in historical context (it gives the days and dates but never the rationale behind them), but it does both acknowledge that the war was started by Japanese aggression (though the subtitles curiously date Pearl Harbor as 8th December 1941!) and that not everyone was driven by banzai patriotism (one character only joined up because his family needed the money). There's even some limited superficial discussion about the Bushido code's fallibility being that it prepares people for death where genuine chivalry prepares people for life and the possibility that the crew's pointless deaths will at least kick Japan out of its fatalistic stupidity if future generations learn from its mistakes. But for the most part it opts to take no real stand on anything, aiming to be all things to all demographics. Or, in this case, all clichés.Obsolete before she was even built, in many ways the Yamato is a great metaphor for the impotent stupidity of the Japanese military regime who ordered the destruction of their navy and army from the safety of their bunkers, its unimpressive war record achieving nothing but the death of its crew. Set during the period that Japan was reduced to fighting a defensive war and losing heavily, there's not much in the way of mounting dread as it becomes more and more obvious that the ship's final sortie will be a pointless suicide mission because there's little hope of identifying with any of the cardboard characters among the experienced crew and raw cadets, so that when the inevitable disaster finally strikes you're more of a disinterested observer. For all the Saving Private Ryan camera-work, there's no sense of immediacy or personal involvement to the scenes: the audience is kept firmly outside the film. For the most part the special effects aren't quite up to snuff – not bad enough to be laughable, not good enough to be entirely convincing - and the film often seems horribly studio bound. Unlike Titanic there's never even any real sense of how the ship works or its basic geography, with the Yamato itself remaining an indifferent backdrop rather than a character in itself.The crew's final shore leave offers a couple of effective vignettes and there are some interesting moments in the last half hour as Japan's defeat and subsequent survivor's guilt are touched upon (though this one gives The Return of the King a run for its money in the most endings stakes), but this is so over-reliant on tapping into local sentiment that it never develops any real resonance for foreign audiences. Horribly over-reliant on the usually excellent Joe Hisaishi's surprisingly derivative and ineffectually sentimental score (think Philippe Sarde's Tess without the power or emotion), in many ways it's like the Yamato itself: big, expensive, redundant and at the end of the day more notable for the way it sank than anything it ever did while it was afloat.
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