Movie Review – Grave of the Fireflies

Grave of the Fireflies is an anti-war movie depicting Seita and Setsuko, both siblings who were orphaned during the war at Kobe, Japan. The movie depicts of how Seita, the elder brother tries to protect and survive the war with his sister, overcoming their problems and difficulties but eventually succumbs to fate and dies.

The movie was very artistically filmed, first by showing a dying Seita on the streets, who dies and reunites with his sister’s soul, after a street cleaner dumps a candy tin that contained Setsuko’s ashes into a field of fireflies. The spirits were seen both dependent on each other, and as they sat alone in a train heading towards an unknown location, it gave the audience the thinking that they left with only each other in the world. Seita then relives the happenings to the audience.

After losing their mother during a bomb raid, the siblings took refuge in their aunt’s house. Although initially welcomed into the family, hostility from their aunt arises due to difficult times of the war. Although some may think the aunt is cruel and not understanding towards the sibling’s sorry plight, one must understand during wartime everyone has no choice but to be selfish towards themselves. Also Seita showed no signs of planning ahead or intentions of being independent. He came across as being ungrateful sometimes, with scenes depicting him lazing around the house and just asking for food to be served.

One could sense the rebelliousness of the young teen in Seita when he went out to buy a stove with the money their late mother has left in the bank after the aunt ticked them off when Setsuko expresses her dislike for porridge while the aunt’s family gets rice balls. A scene of Seita and Setsuko’s spirits in red looking back during their living days was seen here, shutting their ears and unable to bear their Aunt’s shouting. From here one can conclude that the siblings didn’t like seeking refuge in their aunt’s place either but had no choice due to their situation.

The aunt showed signs of guilt when the siblings decided to leave and fend for themselves, yet the laughter of Setsuko gave audience the thinking that this could be a change for the better, hence hinting hope. They eventually found an abandoned shelter and lived in there. Life was good for the initial part. However due to lack of planning and Seita’s prideful nature, they both out casted themselves from the society, causing them to lost touch of what was going on with the country and unable to sought for help. Scenes of Seita refusing help or advices shows that he is too young to be socially mature enough to understand that one has to work in order to earn a living and human in general need to depend on each other for survival. One may argue that the society hadn’t been nice to the siblings, but being a Navy officer’s son it would be natural for people to expect Seita to be more courageous in facing his problems.

As for Setsuko, one can see that she is actually more mature and understanding as compared to her brother, given her very young age. There was a scene of her making a tomb for the dead fireflies they had captured the night before to provide light for the dark cave. There she calmingly revealed to Seita that she knows that their mother has died, and that she understood that all living things must die one day. Whereas her brother had chosen to be in denial of their mother’s passing, therefore breaking down when learned of Setsuko knowing the matter. It could be seen as finally accepting mother’s passing, or knowing how weak he has been as he avoided facing the matter of death himself.

Setsuko has also been a very thoughtful girl. Despite being really sick she has never made much noise or given much pressure to her brother. This can be seen when she was almost dying and craving for a droplet candy, she sucked on marbles imagining they were candies, hence showing her positivity and thoughtful nature. We can see that although Setsuko was dependent on her brother to protect and provide for her, she is actually the one giving Seita the moral support to go on in life.

In the scene where Seita was on the way to the hilltop to cremate his sister, Seita saw rich girls returning back to their lavish homes and showing the irony of the poor and the rich. One couldn’t help but to wonder if Seita had thought he is responsible for Setsuko’s death. Had he been more mature in thinking or not being so prideful, Setsuko may have survived.

The film depicted the harshness and cold hearted nature of human, but also irony between the poor and the rich. Especially during wartime, such differences are really prominent. An example would be the farmer who has been selling Seita food and supplies when they still had some money left. Despite being acquaintance, he did not hesitate at all in reporting Seita to the police when he has no more money to buy supplies and resorted to stealing from hi farm. The farmer knows very well of Seita and Setsuko’s situation. However he was still able to give Seita advises and even telling him how to cremate his sister when she passed on.

Before watching the movie I thought it wouldn’t be a good movie as I’m not a big fan of Japanese animation as they come across as somewhat pointless to me. Why watch anime when you can real human acting? However after watching Graves of the Fireflies I get it. The tinge of emotions and depression throughout the whole film is not achievable or could even be ruin if humans played it out. It is the lack of the human touch that allows the viewer to figure out the character’s ideas and thinking, hence watching ‘what the viewer themselves want to see’. And because there is no ‘actual’ human shown, the film used some really good music to capture the viewer’s emotions, for eg during the mourning scene for Setsuko and the scene where the siblings has lost their mother.

Seita’s unconditional love for his sister touches me really deeply. Overall I think it is really a good show to human nature during war times, and no matter who initiated the war, it’s always the commoner from both sides suffering the consequences.

(1085 words)

Nurturing life in the kitchen

When I was younger, I remember seeing my mother getting busy and hectic in the kitchen. Growing up in a Taoist family that owns a temple, my mother was responsible for all the cakes and offerings during deities' birthdays and temple events. The number of cakes she has to come up with for such events were usually in tens and hundreds and as they were all usually steamed, little me would be sitting one corner in the kitchen watching all the commotion and feeling the house temperature going higher and higher. There are many kinds of cakes mother makes. 'Fa gao', which literally means raised cakes, pink peach cakes with glutinous rice fillings, plain steam cakes and one of my favorites, red turtle cakes with peanut or mug bean fillings.

Back then I don't really know how to appreciate all these food or the effort my mother put into. I just think of the whole saga as quite a hard chore as I also remember my parents screaming against each other and the house getting hotter and hotter. It was so stressful not just because there's a huge number of cakes to come up with in a 3 room flat kitchen (obviously not as well equipped as compared to commercial kitchens) but also nobody else is helping mother at all. Father would be busy to coordinate other temple stuff and work, my eldest sister would be working in her company and has no luck in the kitchen ever and my brother being a young teenager really can't give a hoot bout all these women kitchen stuff. To top it off, she has to make extra sometimes because the aunties and uncles from the temple loves her cakes and not only they bag away all the cakes up after the events, they sometimes even ask for more and mother would never turn them down.

Since I was the only one left I decided to help mother. As she makes all the flours and tapioca together I will be standing beside her holding a bowl of water or melted sugar, waiting for her cue for me to dribble in the liquid into the huge red plastic mixing bowl. As she shapes out the little red turtle cakes I'll be holding a cut out banana leaf in my little palms, making sure there is already oil on it and ready for her to place the cake on it. It was quite an operation kind of thing which I enjoy helping out and not to mention, father would proudly boast of me in front of friends and relatives telling them what a good helper I was to my mother. Little did I know that all these kitchen practices not only trains me up to cook and bake, but also understand the dynamics of teamwork.

However happy days didn't last long. My mother contracted breast cancer when I was 14 and her work in the kitchen came to a halt. All the cakes since then were ordered from confectioneries and obviously doesn't taste as good. It came as quite a blow for me because not only mom is sick, but also I won't be able to help her in all kitchen action anymore. Food then was horrible and we didn't eat that well but it's from there that sparkled my life in the kitchen and my attitude towards good food and happy cooking. I started handling daily family dinners, to the occasional weekend baking and Chinese new year baking, and right now, I own a little online bakery selling alcoholic and artisan flavored cheesecakes, cookies and designer cakes.

Business has been great so far, manageable for home bakers like me and as irony as it sounds, sometimes my mother end up helping me out. I can't help but to emphasize that if it weren't for my mother, I wouldn't have discovered my affection with the kitchen. As cliche as it sounds, but the kitchen is truly the heart of the home. It's where food was being fed to us from the most sincere and heartwarming soul and nurturing us into our daily lives secretly without most of us knowing. It can be a bad day at work, tiff with a beloved one or a rejected project, but a bowl of hot soup, a little red turtle cake or just that smell of something baking or cooking in the kitchen is all you need to tell you that the world is a better place.

Kat's attitude towards writing

Oh I love to write. Though I would say I'm more of a reader than a writer but I do love writing. I can write bout anything under the sun. The Sun, the trees, the smell of cheese, my new Starbucks tumbler or even Catherine of Aragon or Henry VIII. And when I do have a blog on baking, that's where I have/get to write even more. I do sometimes wish I can write like those notable figures like Oscar Wilde and stuff's like that but then, not everyone has that ability. I even hoped that there would be a superpower enabling humble beings like me able to conjure up words of meaningful or sophisticated means within minutes or even seconds. But for someone who digest like 2 series of Marvel comics per week, I think whatever I'm gonna write is pretty much trash. But that's of course unless I'm writing a recipe, of course.