Grave Of The Fireflies Roger Ebert | __full__

I have seen this film three times. I will never watch it again. But I am grateful it exists. It is one of the greatest war films ever made—indeed, one of the greatest films, period. See it once. Bring no children. Bring no snacks. Bring only the knowledge that animation is not a genre, but an art form capable of expressing the deepest registers of human pain.

Ebert’s praise was grounded in the film’s ability to use animation to reach a level of emotional truth that live-action struggle to achieve. He famously remarked: grave of the fireflies roger ebert

It is there, in a cave by a placid lake, that the film performs its cruel magic. We watch the siblings play in the firefly light. We watch Setsuko build a tiny grave for the dead insects. “Why do fireflies have to die so soon?” she asks. Seita doesn’t answer. He is too busy watching his sister starve. I have seen this film three times

At the very end, we see a modern Kobe, neon and chrome, bustling with life. And on a hill overlooking the city, two ghost children sit on a park bench, eating a candy tin that will never be empty. They are not sad. They are simply waiting. Waiting for us to remember what happened to them. Waiting for us to ensure it never happens again. It is one of the greatest war films

Roger Ebert , one of history's most renowned film critics, considered Isao Takahata’s 1988 Studio Ghibli masterpiece, , to be one of the greatest war films ever made.

We open in a crowded train station. A young boy, ragged and skeletal, leans against a pillar. He is dying. A janitor approaches, finds a candy tin, and tosses it into a field. From the tin, a small, ghostly firefly rises. So begins the memory of Seita, a teenager trying to keep his little sister, Setsuko, alive in the final months of World War II.