Grave of the Fireflies has broken me.

This movie is almost as old as me, but tonight is when I finally got around to viewing it. I've been sitting here in absolute stunned silence for about 30 minutes now. I know it's just a film, but watching Setsuko wither away, her calls for Seita getting weaker and weaker as time passed, her hallucinations and trying to feed Seita the mudballs she made, thinking they were rice balls, damn.

I felt Seita's pain when he cremated her, looking at her for a long time before closing the lid. I was so happy that he saved the candy box, but then I remembered back to the beginning of the movie with his own death by starvation and thought back to when the train station employee threw that candy tin into the grass with the fireflies.

I'll be thinking back to this movie for a long, long time. It's beautifully written, expertly animated and something everyone should see at least once. To me, it's like Schindler's List: I'm grateful that it was made and glad to have watched it, but I'll probably never want to watch it again.

Submitted April 12, 2021 at 12:55PM by MightyCaseyStruckOut https://ift.tt/3dc7U6q