昨日ようやく明日への遺言を見てきました
ゆったり見れるだろうと思っていったのですが、予想に反してかなりの入りでした＞梅田のブルク７
結論から言えば、非常に素晴らしいと思いました。そして前評判通り、ほとんど原作の『ながい旅』及び『毒箭』をそのままなぞっていたのには驚きました。法廷の合間のシーンがやや退屈というか唐突と感じる方も居たと思います。その点は映画としてはマイナスかもしれませんが、あの部分は岡田将軍の宗教人としての側面を描かない限り、あれ以上深くはなりえず、しょうがないと思います。竹野内豊のナレーションも、確かに第一声を聞いて吹きそうになりましたが、馴れます。
白状すれば私は、Dr.フェザーストーンの「無差別空襲を証明しようとしているのです！」というセリフで、もう半泣きでした。藤田まことも良かったです。
この映画での｢真の悪役｣になってた人々、つまり主人公らにのみ罪を着せようとして検察側証人になった軍の法務関係者たちの存在だ。そのモデルとなった人たちにも当然遺族はいるわけで、他人には計り知れない立場や言い分も当然あるだろう。そこまで踏み込んで描かれてたなら、この話はさらに｢フェアな｣ものになってたんじゃないか。
大山、山上、岡田の三人の法務官は何れも劇中では変名となっていましたね。大西大佐などはそのままでしたけど。製作者が、名前を変えようと思うほどに、彼らの立場は無いですよね。これは確かに一つの問題だと思います。
「生まれ変わっても資を夫とするでしょう」は
本間雅治夫妻のエピソードが（保守知識人の間では）有名であるため
如何なものかと思う。
私も本間富士子さんを思い浮かべました。本間将軍もいずれは世に出るべき人だと思いますが。
R.Y.: Young Japanese don't have much knowledge about the war, and now many people are reviewing the war, trying to find justifications for it. They say that the Tokyo war-crimes trials were unfair. I think the message this film has for Americans is good. They have to realize that the war had many aspects, that some actions were wrong and cannot be justified. That's a message that could be conveyed to Americans, but young Japanese may take away the wrong message, that the Japanese Army could be justified for what it did. A lot of Japanese officers in China committed war crimes. Okada did most of his service in Japan.
M.S.: What I see in this film is not rightism or straight nationalism, but rather soft nationalism. Here is this admirable character who stood up for his beliefs. He did some bad things and then admitted to doing them.
P.B.: The movie does teach you some things you probably didn't know before, but Okada is such a figure of overwhelming integrity that you sort of forget about the war.
R.P.: We left out all scenes of violence. It was very important to me and Koizumi-san. It would have been very easy if we had a flashback in which a Japanese soldier came out and you've got some poor American lying down, and then off goes the head. But that takes it out of the realm of the antiwar film and puts it into the realm of the horror film. What it says to everyone who watches it is that the guy who did that is a devil. He's got to die. I've got to get retribution. Any film that engenders that in an audience is not an antiwar film.
P.B.: I wanted to know more about Okada. The focus on his dignity and honor is so intense that it's difficult to get a sense of the man.
M.S.: He represents an ideal.
P.B.: Until Yoshida-san pointed it out, I didn't realize he'd never been to the front lines. I wanted to see what he did, because I needed that context to understand why I should accept what he did in the courtroom as being worthy of admiration.
M.S.: I wondered about the absence of violence. I thought you could have shown scenes of someone getting their head chopped off. But then you'd also have to show children getting burned alive. Someone once said it's difficult to make a war film that doesn't glamorize war, because no matter how bad it was you have guys doing heroic things. And Okada in this film is an admirable figure.
P.B.: But in order to find him truly admirable we have to see what he's gone through and what he's overcome. Maybe it's more of a dramatic question than an ethical one.
R.P.: I agree, it would have been clearer. But I don't like the feeling that those sort of scenes bring out in an audience. You have to present it as a cruel act, and it was cruel. Maybe that would have made it more understandable, but to me it would have taken away from the antiwar message. I didn't want to show any violence.
R.P.: Americans are as capable as Germans or Japanese of committing horrendous atrocities, but the vast majority of Americans don't believe it. They think, "We don't do this," just as Japanese people don't believe they could have done the things they did during World War II. When you start believing that, you become dangerous.
R.Y.: Few Americans know that 100,000 people were killed in one night during the firebombing of Tokyo. If you think that's the right thing to do, then you will always be able to justify anything in war. Some people may think this is only a story about the past, and that it only applies to Japanese people. It might be interesting if you can get people to compare this story to the current situation in Iraq.
M.S.: That reminds me of that documentary about (former U.S. secretary of Defense) Robert McNamara, "The Fog of War" (2003).
R.P.: McNamara did not take any responsibility for what he did in Vietnam. (McNamara was one of the main architects of the Vietnam War.) In the end, he says something like, "I don't know why these things happen." He's a coward.
