I saw this today on the big screen, and I have never loved it more! Of the Ghibli crew, Isao Takahata was the one who tried new and crazy things. Miyazaki has a pretty constant style, but look at Takahata's Ghibli run: Grave of the Fireflies, Only Yesterday, Pom Poko, My Neighbors the Yamadas, and The Tale of Princess Kaguya. Each is an experiment in a totally new style (with Only Yesterday being the only "normal" one).
And he started it off with this masterpiece, which premiered with Miyazaki’s My Neighbor Totoro in the strangest double feature ever. If you're unaware, the film is a heartbreaking tragedy about two kids who struggle to survive after the firebombing of Japan during WWII--and fail. (It's no spoiler: the first line is the boy's ghost telling us the date of his death.) It is not only the best film ever made about war, but the Americans are the villains (well…along with a certain aunt). Clearly, watching Grave of the Fireflies is never a simple experience.
I've seen in enough times that the injustice and grief of the story don't stand in the way of me reveling in the film's perfection and beauty.
The two main images are stillness and fire (see the title). The fire descends as bombs, ascends as campfires and burning villages, and floats in between as fireflies. The entire film is as interstitial and suspended as the titular insects. It is really the story of two ghosts bearing witness to the last months of their lives.
This is also where the stillness comes in. There are many shots in the movie that are completely static, and many more where the background (flames and smoke) is frozen. Yes, this is a sign of the era and the budget and all that, but whether it is intentional or not, this eerie unnatural stillness is my favorite thing about the movie. Those flames stand fixed, covering the horizon, forever. They cannot ever be put out, because they are the past, and we must reckon with our helplessness to change the fate these characters and their country met at our hands. The fires of war are stationary, stagnant, stabile. Their stillness not only speaks of the film’s ghost POV and the unchangeable holocaust of war, but they say something about earth's unending violence. The last shot of the movie also speaks to this, but with a slant more open to hope.
Certainly, it is not an easy film nor a happy one on any level, but I do hold it to be required viewing for all humans, especially those in America. Force yourself to be uncomfortable, to weep, to feel your own impotence, to see your nation as the enemy. It can only do you good.