Both an utterly harrowing antiwar film and a tenderly handled romance. An exhausting sense of hopeless pervades. This is rendered both bearable and all the more heartrending by delicate moments of humanity that shine through in the madness, and by a relationship that grows between a doctor and nurse as they comfort one another using each other to briefly escape the pain all around them. The look at the nurse's guilt over the tasks she performs in her job is both fascinating and very saddening.

Impressively unflinching, even if the guiding directorial hand is never quite invisible. Nishi's character is well developed and the while the commentary on war has been done before and since, this at least provides a fresh perspective. Time has dulled a bit of the impact, but not too much.

I have nothing bad to say; it's harrowing, tragic, and well-made. Nishi has a complex sexuality and she's not merely a figure of exploitation (once again we've got rape in a Japanese movie, but at least it's not being played for kinky kicks). But it didn't move me in any way. I didn't see much point to it. Ichikawa's anti-war messages are stronger, Mizoguchi's work is more elegant, Suzuki is more subversive. Not a bad film, but not a great one, and certainly not as distinctive as Blind B