A disturbing and often nightmarish adaptation of Shohei Ooka's Fires on the Plain (previously adapted by Kon Ichikawa in 1959) by one of Japanese cinema’s most singular mavericks—in addition to producing, writing, directing, photographing, art directing, and editing this stark and genuinely grim film, Shinya Tsukamoto also plays the film’s protagonist, a private who wanders the battlefield, cut off from his unit, and sinks deeper into the obscenity of war through a series of encounters with fellow soldiers all in one way or another unhinged by the horrors each day brings. An uncompromising piece of extreme cinema in the grand Film Comment Selects tradition.