Krieg ist etwas Furchtbares. Derzeit erleben wir dies allesamt tagtäglich mit. Schlimmer als je zuvor sehen wir zudem, dass solch kriegerische Konflikte nicht nur auf dem Schlachtfeld ausgetragen werden, sondern dass auch Informationen und Wissen ein wertvolles Gut sind. Umso mehr ist es nachvollziehbar, dass auch das Misstrauen gegenüber möglicher Fakenews steigt. Onoda erzählt uns eine wahre Geschichte, die genau auf diesem Konflikt beruht und einen Japaner für immer in die Geschichtsbücher katapultiert hat, der rund 30 Jahre seine militärische Stellung hielt, im Glauben weiter für sein Land kämpfen zu müssen. Trotz, dass der Film fast drei Stunden lang ist, wird dieser zu keiner Zeit wirklich langweilig und schafft es mit einfachsten Mitteln, das Publikum bei der Stange zu halten. Die Hauptdarsteller Yûya Endô und Kanji Tsuda, die beide dieselbe Rolle einnehmen, präsentieren eine überragende Leistung und schaffen es im Alleingang eine Sozialstudie abzuliefern, die die psychische Verkrüppelung auf Basis von Einsamkeit thematisiert.

Leider jedoch werden immer wieder nur gute Ansätze angedeutet, aber nicht in Gänze ausgespielt. Verschwörungstheorien und Paranoia sind nicht konsequent bis zu Ende gedacht, wodurch sich hin und wieder auch etwas unsinnige Handlungen des Protagonisten ergeben. Liebhabende der Bildgestaltung von Kriegs- und Antikriegsepen aus der Vietnam-Zeit wie APOCALYPSE NOW, kommen vollkommen auf ihre Kosten, denn Regisseur Arthur Harari fängt große Bilder mit einem schwermütigen Schleier ein. Wer eine gute Sitzmuskulatur hat, sollte sich diesen Film auf jeden Fall einmal gönnen.

Onoda – 10.000 Nächte im Dschungel ©2022 Rapid Eye Movies

Onoda – 10.000 Nächte im Dschungel ©2022 Rapid Eye Movies

The island of Lubang is located in the west of the Philippine archipelago and, with a length of 30 kilometres and a width of 8.5 kilometres, can even be crossed on foot. In the course of the Pacific War, which only ended with the Second World War and was supposed to settle the supremacy in the Pacific Ocean, the area was conquered by the Japanese Empire. Specifically, this was the Battle of the Philippines, which ended in 1942 with a complete occupation. This, of course, was not put up with by the US, which had previously set up its own government on the archipelago, which the Japanese troops had classified as a war-deciding area, and thus administered the region. As early as 1944, the US military began a counter-attack aimed at recapture, which eventually caused Japan’s army to withdraw.

Director Arthur Harari, who previously released only two other feature films and is known among others as an actor from SIBYL, dedicates himself and his team to an exciting story that took place on that very island of Lubang and has already been adapted several times in literature, most recently by NOSFERATU director Werner Herzog in his book “The Dawn of the World”. Harari was inspired to write ONODA by his father, who told him the story based on real events. According to the 41-year-old Frenchman, he has always been fascinated by people who have to struggle with total loneliness in the exercise of their profession and face the most adverse living conditions.

This is what it’s all about

When 22-year-old Onoda Hirō is unable to pursue his dream job of becoming a pilot because, according to his assessment, he is physically unfit for it, he nevertheless wants to fight for his country and is receptive to a special offer. His superior, Major Taniguchi, offers him training in secret warfare, which consists primarily of understanding that the most sacred thing is not death for the fatherland, but survival and spying. Successful completion eventually leads to the young man being transferred as a lieutenant to the island of Lubang, which he is to secure and scout with a handful of soldiers until the Japanese troops would return. He follows this order extremely conscientiously and from then on devotes all his vital energy to fulfilling this mission, even though the American troops are already dangerously close. An end to this war is not in sight for him.

Review

ONODA, although based on real events, is a fictional story which Harari wrote and realised based on some research together with his team, but is nevertheless primarily an invention of the director in terms of characterisation. The actual real person Onoda published his own biography in the 1970s, of whose existence Harari only learned much too late and therefore makes no reference to the book “No Surrender: My Thirty Year War”.

Onoda – 10.000 Nächte im Dschungel ©2022 Rapid Eye Movies

With a running time of almost three hours, the film itself is a hefty chunk to digest. In fact, however, the story has been kept at a reasonable pace, so that the time passes surprisingly quickly and boring passages are largely absent. Despite a rather unexciting pacing, this French war drama offers us a broad field of varied plot lines and is often intelligently edited in the sequence of scenes. For example, we are presented with a glimpse of the future in 1974 as the opening, although the actual action takes place in the decades before. Large parts of the film are told in a straight line with variously large leaps in time and are only interrupted once by a comprehensive flashback that deals in detail with the protagonist’s education.

American look from French hands

It is clearly evident that the flick is not Asian in nature, as the Western imprint is very prominent, especially in the image design. There is always a filter on the images that gives the impression that this is an older film, which combines the visual styles of APOCALYPSE NOW and GOOD MORNING, VIETNAM and exudes a bit of dreariness with pale bluish, dull colours. The scenery is kept simple and generally only shows us the magnificent tropical forests and hills of the Cambodian countryside. Especially in the early days, many moments take place at night or twilight. In addition, Harari changes the weather conditions very frequently, giving us sultry, oppressive atmospheres in exchange for long, gloomy rain sequences that not infrequently seem gruelling. The whole thing is exacerbated by the almost complete absence of musical influences and the exclusive use of nature sounds.

Onoda – 10.000 Nächte im Dschungel ©2022 Rapid Eye Movies

Lead actor Yûya Endô and understudy Kanji Tsuda deliver impressive performances that encompass a multi-faceted range of personalities. Despite being more of a local acting star so far, there is little to fault him for in his performance, in which he is at times completely solely responsible for the development of the story for long passages. Only rarely is the focus also on his flanking colleagues, who most of the time are merely staged as hangers-on and cannon fodder to keep the momentum of the plot alive. Endô works particularly well with his facial expressions, allowing us to share in his completely swirling emotional world, which offers many different perspectives, from a proud desire to fight to a complete mental breakdown. ONODA is not the first recent Japanese film to take a lot of time to build up its characters, for in DRIVE MY CAR, too, the focus is on the characters.

Time constraints despite overlength

Harari repeatedly finds interesting approaches to storytelling, most of which relate to the development of his protagonist, turning the work into a social study. Despite a very patriotic template, the director tries to break free of these shackles a little and focus his attention exclusively on his main character and explain certain decisions based on his personality. Above all, their motivation has to be elaborated extensively and, apart from a few small blunders, this succeeds wonderfully. We are shown how hard life must be over an enormously long period of time, filled with loneliness and constant fear. In particular, the digressions into conspiracy-theory territory are understandable, if unfortunately far too short-sighted. Onoda is also developed as a kind of Mowgli character who suffers from brutalisation and neglect due to social isolation and to whom personal access must first be laboriously rebuilt.

Onoda – 10.000 Nächte im Dschungel ©2022 Rapid Eye Movies

Ironically, the running time of ONODA is not long enough to adequately stage these elementary excursions of his character’s development and to capture the consequences of civilisational isolation. The script also gets lost in its own narrative jungle and presents us with the soldier loyal to the service only in the opening moments as an energetic reconnaissance man trying to fulfil his mission. This point is increasingly neglected as the story progresses, which may be related to the fact that further spying on civil society would not justify the outcome of the film and the real-life template.

Conclusion

Although Harari’s latest film may seem a little unwieldy at first, he has managed to turn a patriotic war film into a rousing character study while telling an intriguing story that offers plenty to discuss. In the style of 80s visual design, which was often used for patriotic US war films, we get a work that does not rely on large-scale explosions and heroic deeds, but rather questions whether its own protagonist even falls into the definition of a heroic figure. Since the cast, with a few exceptions, delivered quite authentic performances, it was extremely easy to connect with the characters and follow their development, which in turn always aroused curiosity as to what would happen next with the central protagonist. I would therefore recommend the film to anyone with a little time and patience for unusual stories.