 the back we're live this is stink tech on jay fidel this is movies we've learned and we're gonna review hell in the pacific made in 1968 and what can we learn uh from these two enemies in this movie um with shackley rafferro uh captain in the u.s navy uh and uh reserved is it michael lily a captain of the u.s navy non-reserve and uh shackley is um uh a retired judge second circuit chief judge of the second circuit and michael lily is a former uh former attorney general of the state of life so shackley uh this is a very interesting movie i must say and you guys are well qualified to talk about it it's during world war two it involves a uh a downed american pilot um played by uh lee marvin lee marvin and um it's also um a uh i guess a a a fellow who was um in the japanese army his name his name is revealed as shuru hiku kurota and he's played by torsira mafuni which is one of my favorite japanese actors but uh shackley can you give us a kind of an introduction on what this movie is about and why it is significant um i'll be happy to uh title again is hell in the pacific and it was um created in 1968 um by director john borman an englishman who's done done quite a few really good movies as you mentioned it stars two people lee marvin and tashira mafuni and they are they are both um military officers uh marvin is american navy officer ostensibly uh bailed out of an aircraft in the south pacific and mafuni is is a japanese uh officer and they end up uh maroon together alone uh on a small island in the south pacific during uh the pacific uh part of the world of world war two um i was going to say uh lee mar it's interesting because this was this movie was done about 20 years after the end of world war two lee marvin was actually a combat marine he served uh during some of the big battles uh with the marines and world war two was was uh wounded on sypan and uh tashira mafuni also served in the japanese military during world war two so he had real people in a sense playing the the roles that they play on on the screen so they kind of bring that background with them to the to the performances which i i think makes it extra interesting because it's it must have had some brought a lot home you know for both of them while they were in the process of doing that um it's it's all about how they relate to each other during their period on the island and and when they leave the island uh and they go through different phases i think it's kind of a metaphor for the evolution of civilization and i jotted down uh phases of anger hostility mistrust eventually mutual coexistence sharing and cooperation and ultimately differential cultural awareness and again mist distrust um it's it's it's basically kind of a tragedy in a way i think there probably is a greek play or a shakespearean tragedy that must have provided the idea to the director uh but it reminded me of this poem that i'd like to read a little bit of which is one of my favorites it's by reddard kippling the ballad of east and west and it goes oh east is east and west is west and never the twain shall meet till earth and sky stand presently at god's great judgment seat but there's neither east nor west border nor breed nor birth when two strong men stand face to face though they come from the ends of the earth i think it captures exactly when we that's the introduction i'll uh chime in as we go along okay uh mike lily your thoughts about this movie why why is this movie as um you know well regarded as it is it is it is a gripping war movie um i first saw it you have to imagine i was off the coast of vietnam during the war and i saw this movie and i was spellbound about these two towering um actors the lee marvin for those that don't remember these two actors lee marvin's one of the greatest actors uh america and to see me phony was not only the greatest japanese actor but he's probably one of the greatest actors of all time and so they both land on this deserted island and it's and it's in the tropical pacific that's actually filmed on an island in the plows which is just north of new guinea and one of the things that's remarkable is there's no coconut trees and i always wondered about that because you know you think about coconuts when you think about tropical islands and the director said he he searched the world for that because he didn't want his actors in an island that had a lot of plenty he he wanted them to be out there uh starving uh not enough water um they were they were that they had they had there was a survival movie as much as uh as a war movie and it was also it was a psychological thriller a great deal of this movie uh is almost in hand of mine uh the the director richley john worman uh planned to have a silent film but then he added dialogue so you've only got two actors so you had to share a mophoney speaking japanese and lee marvin speaking english and no subtitles and you don't need to even understand either language to understand what they're saying and what they're uh trying to do because it's all done by acting and these two characters clashed and they imagine this is a microcosm of world war two the the two japanese the japanese army and the american army are fighting on this little island between these two characters uh and they go through a period of fighting each other but they don't kill each other which is kind of interesting me um they make a make a lot of noise and they make it look like you're going to kill each other but they don't and at one point mophoney captures marvin and he has them tied up up and dragging a rock around the beach and then marvin gets free and then he ties up with mophoney and he has them going around and uh at some point they realize that uh alone they can't survive on this island and so they're going to have to accommodate each other but their testosterone is such that it's an uneasy truth um they they almost don't ever really become friends except near the end and then we talk about that in a little bit but on the island they pretty much decided they're going to have to cooperate if they're going to survive and so they ultimately uh get a lot of bamboo and they're able to build a raft and and they set out now it they didn't know where they were going uh i didn't see any food or water on that raft but they apparently were on that raft for a while um and they braved the elements and there was lots of towering waves anyway they wind up on another beach and it turns out to be a beach with uh fortifications that look like they've been bombed out and and uh pretty decrepit but they think it's a japanese held building and so marvin hides while toshirumi funi goes up to find the japanese and to take to protect li marvin well li marvin sees a bunch of uh things that are the u.s navy or the u.s army and he realizes oh no this is in japanese it's it's american and so he runs up don't you don't you don't he's trying to protect mifuni they're trying to protect each other and and there's a very interesting thing happens they don't see each other mifunis in the building and he and he steps out and he makes a noise and marvin looks up and sees mifuni and he startled and he then he realizes it's me funny and he says i thought you were a jab he'd become he'd become at that point such a friend that he didn't think of him as an enemy he didn't think of him as a jab he was his friend and here they were protecting each other so that's that that is what leads up to um what happens in the end which is very dramatic but but from a cinematography standpoint the the visuals um they got a nomination in the academy awards for best costume um the the only thing on the island other than those two were birds so you heard them talking and birds and that was it and then the island and then they wound up semi-friends and that's what takes them up near the end but uh and and it also had an a very unusual um musical score um it was haunting sometimes it was opera music like phantom of the opera but the the the score was just brilliant uh and this was an extremely difficult film to film just imagine they were out in the middle of nowhere they were living on a rented ship run by some chinese so every day they they'd leave the ship to go ashore and they have to have all everything had to be battery or uh i don't know how they there was no power on that island i mean that island is now you can go there now it's called lee marvin beach you can there there are uh uh trips that will take you out there you can spend the night on this this pristine beach um but getting back to the coconut thing too i always wondered why they didn't fill in on kawai or or any of the wine islands the kooloa there there's plenty of places at voy but it was the coconuts he couldn't have coconuts and they went around that yeah they they flew around the island was looking for a location but they settled on plow that's uh i i found it um a thrilling movie uh i was so captivated when i first saw it in vietnam that later on when i came home like i went and saw it again and then i then saw it recently again and i i i just think it um it came out with a critical acclaim it the critics thought it was a it was a wonderful movie so it got really high praise but it didn't do well in the box office and apparently the reason was there were some other blockbusters that came out that kind of overshadowed it and i'll name name a few of those and you can realize why they were up against a lot of competition there was the battle britain there was where eagles dare which is a wonderful movie the bridge of ramagan that that is a magnificent war movie in germany and castle peep and there's several other um so unfortunately didn't do so well in the box office but it's such a great movie came out in dvd in 2017 and it's all been enhanced and so um if anybody ever wanted to really see a good production of that movie you can do it in dvd or you can get it on youtube yeah it is on youtube i saw it on youtube yeah that's what i'm looking for yeah it would be good to see it on a big screen though because uh borman had some uh nice photography work in that movie especially the scenes where it's see i might need a chorus a cure a chorus always kind of um films of nature uh one thing i was going to mention was uh borman points out uh mike was kind enough to send me an interview with with the director john borman he gave a lot of this background which was interesting one of the things he said was that um marvin didn't speak any japanese and toshiro mcconnie didn't speak any english and they were all on this boat right and uh but but they became good friends they were they apparently they were drinking buddies and so they would drink together a lot and and became very good friends during the during the period of the of the filming and i guess there was a little irritation between the japan they had a japanese crew uh uh for i guess moving their cameras around and and so on but a chinese ship and i guess it was he points out there was a little antagonism there because remember it was very long after world war two uh so i guess some feelings were still running hard but the other thing i mentioned one thing i noticed during the time that they're on the island um you get to see a contrast between uh uh the survival efforts of toshiro mcconnie and and lee marvin larvin kind of flounders around especially in the beginning uh he didn't take the survival materials from his life raft which which mcconnie grabs a hold of and and but then you see mcconnie uh he uh he plants a little garden and he has he has he apparently wove a fish trap that he puts out so he's catching fish and he's cooking fish on the beach and then he hangs up because they're having a kind of adversarial interactions he hangs up some uh kind of like mobiles that he has created which are it really captures i think kind of the shinto buddhist uh personality of mcconnie the way he the way he goes about things uh whereas uh whereas marvin is kind of very loud and aggressive and uh it ambles around like kind of like an ape sometimes it is angry you know he just said they they had to collaborate but i i found the japanese character much more competent at living alone on the desert island he knew how to fish he knew how to cook he knew how to make weapons to the extent they were useful um he knew how to he knew how to live on a desert island and i you know the lee marvin character really didn't uh he was kind of a klutz and you you wonder what he brought to the table um big bulky guy and maybe he was you know what he brought he brought some kind of creativity uh where tishira lufoni was uh he was building a little tiny rap just for himself it was lee marvin's idea and in this moment where he looked up at the birds there were these seabirds and it gave him an idea that maybe they could take a raft to another island because seabirds go from island to island or something and it was his creative idea that led to the larger that was more likely to make it and let me give you my some of my reaction number one is they were in great shape you know for guys who were in the in the military in world war two this is 20 years later 1968 more than 20 years later they were in great shape the two of them and they look like they went to the gym every day uh and it's really interesting um and um you know the other part of it i knew this might be so this was this was brilliant cinematography uh there were scenes that emblazoned themselves on your memory and he for example when he was covered with mud you remember that and only you could only see his eyes this is lee marvin's eyes that was extraordinary it's the kind of thing that that you remember and but i kept thinking of other movies that that that were close by for example lord of the flies lord of the flies where you're in the state of nature and you're operating at some primeval level and you know all of the culture you brought with you was kind of stripped off uh let's see what you can do along in this case two people more of the flies was a whole group of kids uh on a desert island and so there's this whole human experiment going on a la amiel's solo where you you have a premise that is very unusual and you see how people adapt to it um you know there were other movies too for example and we reviewed this a couple months ago a woman of the dunes a japanese movie made in the late 40s or early 50s about a guy who slides down and gets involved in a in a in a in a little uh home in a small town along the coast of japan and you can't get out and there's a woman in there and it's very you know very it's an art film and frankly guys i thought this was an art film um it was as much an art film as i can remember seeing well a war film because there were no no military elements here just these two these two guys um so and i thought that was very interesting and your point about the music mike and you know i thought the music was was was really interesting but it was jazz it was jazz and it was weird jazz weird jazz as you could hear anywhere all over greddish village in 1968 that's what the music would have been in 1968 if they're gonna remake it they gotta use modern music because this was like weird but anyway it was it's an art film of great interest in the fact that they never like shackley said they never really got together they never really became buds um they understood each other and it's that east and west it's out of rugged chipling never the twain will meet but maybe the twain understands and you know 1968 there was an issue about that trying to understand west to east and east to west trying to make sense of the war trying to find a new relationship with japan you know all of that was was in there and i think there's a lot of important issues that are covered in this very sparse kind of movie but somebody has to tell me the differential endings as i don't fully understand you know how the endings play with with the bulk of the movie the original ending as i recall was um they walked away from each other right you're you're thinking about they they never really found each other they never really got to be friends and at the end of the in the one that borman made they just walked away from each other end of story but in the uh the the revised version which played at a film festival um and i can't remember which festival i was in europe um they had a different ending and it's the ending which is on youtube right now it's uh where they they get bombed by somebody i don't know if it was uh a japanese plane or an american plane and they both die uh in a shell in a building which is destroyed which is a kind of vessel that somehow doesn't work as well as the original ending and as i understand it war was really ticked off that they took his original ending out your thoughts let me set it up though um so they're in this building and they find clothes they find food and and importantly they find sake and so they shave themselves so now they're gentlemen uh and of course buffoonie was always the japanese samurai and leave marvin was always the the american guy but but their metaphors for the two cultures and they're coming together they're drinking they're laughing they're friends they're happy um they've survived they got to this island they're clean they're clean shaven they don't see themselves as enemy uh this is as close to friendship as they ever get and there's a uh an august 16 1943 magazine life magazine with the japanese on the cover and buffoonie is flipping through it and there's girls and you know all the stuff that's american in there and he happens on four pictures only one is in that issue um of japanese that are dead dying and captured um and the last one is these japanese that are died in the mud at the battle of tenoroo river at the guadalcanal but seeing these movie these pictures you can see buffoonie's character change from being this friendly guy drinking sake to getting more and more angry more and more just perturbed by this at these staring at this meanwhile uh the marvin is saying now tell me why you don't believe in god they tell me you don't believe in jesus christ but these guys they don't understand each other but he's he's asking him why he doesn't believe in god and buffoonie is starting to yell at him like it like like he does in his it is samurai moves and at one point he says yaka about she was a japanese for a shut up and it's a very uh it's a it's a it's a insulting thing to say yaka my feet is somebody but of course marvin doesn't know what he's saying and but they're out they obviously know that they're angry at each other and marvin gets up and he kicks over the fire pit and he walks over the other other end of this building and he puts on a backpack and he walks out and buffoonie puts on a tie and a hat and he's gotten in the uniform and he walks off and that's how borman played that movie and that's how i saw it when it was originally produced in 1969 and i i was shocked when i saw the the later version and what happened was the producers just changed that ending and when it opened in britain and in japan it had the bombing and they asked borman about it and he said you know it just doesn't work it's kind of they went through all of that effort that survival and getting there and and surviving the thing and it's very cynical he said for them just to kill them and that's how they did it there and he said i hated it and clearly um when you see the two films the the one with the bombing just makes no sense uh the one with them walking off they realize you know what we're still enemies there's you can hear bombing in the background uh and as shackley says uh we don't know whether it's in their heads or it's actually out there but there there is there is bombing or something going on in the background but they obviously realize oh we're actually enemies and then they separate and their friendship ends which is which is a very poignant and sad ending but the the bombing to me was pointless let me offer a thought on that mike this is when they walked away from each other the idea was that it was an imperfect relationship and an imperfect um you know coming together but they each learned things about the other culture and i that's got to be part of his you know intention in this movie so when they walk away from each other and go back to their respective corners go back to their respective altars they're going to take that experience that lesson output you know diversity lesson back to their respective countries and and and so you you have to wonder you have to think what is going to happen in the next chapter if you kill them off that becomes impossible well and also um they don't kill each other so they're enemies and they're still at war but they don't kill each other yeah can i add i i i kept wondering how that movie played in japan you know you're only 20 years after the after the end of world war two you got two people who actually participated in world war two and and and there are people who know the history of of the pacific war um very few japanese soldiers actually surrendered in world war two and i'll bet very even fewer office japanese officers surrendered um and so just for the people for people in japan to see these two interacting and reaching almost of kind of a friendship seems to me would have would have had a very would have been very impactful for a japanese audience but i didn't see anything on google about that but it would be very interesting to know that well i totally agree because macawther had come in and sort of americanized westernized japan and they were still involved in that process by 1968 and so i think they would have liked that that ending that movie you know that a movie in general very very much um you know i i guess my reaction um is that this was um really a contribution to the conversation between the you know the us and japan um and it was a it was important in its own way although apparently not all american audiences liked it that much but i would say the most poignant moment in the movie and i'd be interested in how you guys feel about the most poignant moment in the movie is where um mafuni was subdued lee marvin he had him on the ground uh i think lee marvin was unconscious for some reason and um and he pulled out marvin's knife which was one of those you know 12 inch long yeah it was a real cellar knife and and he had to decide what he was going to do because he could have killed him so easily but he didn't and it's that moment in the movie where you realize that there's some kind of fundamental human connection happening here and it changed it because up to that point they were enemies at that point there was something else happen do you agree or did you find some other moment in the movie that is uh you know as as profound or more profound shackling no i i agree uh the the other part though that i also liked a lot was when they get to the different the set the second island and they and they get into the building after they see that it's they're the only people there mafuni finds this cabinet that has scissors and and he begins to to change himself uh and by cutting off his beard and then that leads to the change of clothes and his metamorphosis back to being a japanese officer and i thought that was pretty interesting because you could see it coming if once he's once he saw those scissors and he started cutting his beard off and uh you could see that things were going to change yeah this was only a temporary adventure the temporary experience and that when you got back to basics they were still enemies mike i could think it was don't do it there were early one at the very first scene or two on the movie was a metaphor for uh the entire movie and that's uh when they they meet on the beach and to sherry mafuni's got this uh stick that looks like a uh a sapphire sword it's like bamboo and and lee marvin has his knife and a and a brand and they're facing off each other like they're in an arena and what happens next is in their own minds but the first thing that happens marvin runs over and he grabs mifuni by the back and by the throat and he stabs him in the back with a knife and you think my god that's the end of the movie and then they're back then the next scene they're back to facing off each other and then mifuni is on marvin and he beats him to a pulp down on the ground well neither neither thing happened they just faced off and then marvin faded into the jungle and so they each saw themselves killing the other but not doing it and that that to me was a metaphor of the whole movie that this thing eventually would become two friends but just for the sake of survival and that was really a remarkable scene and and the uh bornman is playing with us he's telling us what's in their minds and we don't know it we don't realize that it's only in their minds yeah that was and that was a quick ending uh jay there's um there's an interesting discussion by warman in his uh interview but he had a very difficult time although it became greenly good friends mifuni and warman but during the course of the filming they had two scripts one in japanese and one in english and someone who had written a script that they gave mifuni that had him playing a different character and and warman said the character was a buffoon and warman wanted buffuni to be this very structured standard a guy who was uh you know not a buffoon he he wanted him to be a really straight character and every single day he had an argument with mifuni over his characterizations and he had to force mifuni to be this character and not a buffoon and and he had to do it all through an interpreter and the interpreter when the when when warman was criticizing mifuni the interpreter said it is not worth my life to do that you know i can't criticize discerning mifuni he says you have to tell him this tell him he has to do this and the guide the interpreter gets down on his knees and he's almost praying to mifuni and he's telling him what warman is telling him and mifuni hauls off and slaps him perfect perfect but later on um warman met with kurosawa who was the great japanese director and he directed all of mifuni's samurai movies over the years which are great it every single movie is as brilliant um he asked him how do you direct mifuni and kurosawa said you point and he goes like an arrow that's it that's all you do you just very different hey and also he also asked kurosawa what what what uh did he have any suggestions as to how the movie should end and he said kurosawa a complete straight face thought about it and thought about and he said they meet a girl that's woman of the dunes he was he was joking yeah well i have two questions i want to pose to you guys uh and uh let me go with you shakley first what do we learn about you you know the principles of human nature of the species from this movie this deserted island two two enemies experiencing all the things in this movie and there were so many things so many you know little vignettes little challenges uh what do we learn about human nature well i i i would say just that there is a common humanity that we always share we all share and and the difference that the things that make us not want to share with each other and cause problems are cultural differences uh but the common humanity underlies it all if you could just create some circumstances where it can come it can it can surface and become dominant then people can get along fine no matter what their cultures are and i i think i think that's true captain cook believed that was as he traveled around into different civilizations and was able to do business most places until until he ended up on the big island it didn't go so well but for the most part he did just fine he went all over the unknown world and and and and it was because he just believed that we we have a common humanity no matter what our backgrounds and cultures are and i i think that's yeah even though sometimes and then we can't get all that close because the culture stands in the way it is but you have to dig a little deeper to find the common human well and the cultural differences and if you if you don't think about that the cultural differences you go to a place like japan you've never been to japan you don't know anything about japan you're going to be stunned by the cultural differences same thing in china um but we're all people beneath it all and now every place i've been in the world i met lots of really nice local people uh it was more when you got into talking to government officials that you know you had that's really an important point michael i want to ask you a similar question what from this movie do we learn about war about world war two but about war in general well uh boreman was portraying the futility of war i mean it it's not a pro war uh movie so and i'm not saying it's an anti-war but but it uh he was showing how futile it was um and it's it's it's a remarkable story because it's hard to even imagine it happening although i've seen references that it's based on a true story but i've never been able to find that story because these these two characters um they they didn't kill each other because they held they held back they were sworn to kill each other the japanese um they bifoni was sworn to the emperor to fight to the death and uh lee marvin pulls out a survival book and he's reading it and he he says well what you do if you get on a lila like this or in this situation you kill the the you're right right right their enemy and so they're being told by by their cultures you know sometimes culture either gets in the way or it actually helped in this case the culture was in the way because stripped of their culture and left to survival mode on this island they resorted to to looking beyond our skin color and our culture and where we came from and working together to that they could only survive by working together they could only build that raft to get across to that other island by working together so in many ways stripping culture out of there got them down to their basic uh where they they were they could work together just for the sake of survival i think that's a remarkable tale yeah yeah and as i said before it really isn't a war movie no it's a movie it's a movie where these guys are and they're thrown into it because of a war but when you see them engage in the screen in the in the course of the movie they're they're really they're enemies but they're not a war it's different it it it uh the fact that um that he walked that mofuni walked off it wasn't i could see why they they they used the bomb ending in japan because um he was sworn to kill his enemy and he didn't and he walked off so killing him off uh saves that it protects me fully from from criticism that that he didn't do the last gas to either kill him or kill his enemy yeah that's a bit bushido you know he should get it well that reminds me of the guy on wam you remember that story it's a hawaii story there was a japanese soldier on wam for i don't know decades after the war and he was still at war in the mountains of wam and finally uh they found him but he had never given up and yes yeah about 27 years now let me ask you guys the last question and that is how do you rate this movie on 1 to 10 and you know i i advise you that many of our reviewers go over 10 so if you wish to go over 10 you can mic you first 11 as i said i was in the vietnam war when i watched this movie and everybody on my ship was spellbound and i was i just loved it but i i loved it from so many different levels oh i love the characters i love uh because i love toshiri mifuni and lee marvin for their other for their their other productions but uh the the visuals you could i mean being from hawaii i felt like i was on a hawaii island without coconuts uh so from from the characterizations the visual the the time that they were world war two um and that these two guys could overcome major difficulties culturally to survive uh to me it's just it's over the top it's over the top but it's not soupy at no point is it soupy and no point is it you know straight hollywood you you really get an idea of of um you know of how they felt in it when faced with this the reality of the situation uh shackley what what do you what do you rate the movie at and you don't have you don't have to agree with mike by the way i i i give it a 10 i give it a 10 i thought it was a very good movie um that i kept a couple funny things so you know you think about when you watch in movies i got kept thinking why did he lose his pistol you know maybe the aviators or in those days in world war two would carry a pistol and you saw he threw the the rounds into the fire at some point and i thought well that's unsat you shouldn't have lost that pistol yeah yeah and oh and uh oh the other thing is they built that raft out of bamboo i don't know if you've ever tried to cut bamboo but that's a that's very difficult to cut big pieces of bamboo like that and they they didn't uh they sort of passed that uh without explaining or showing how they work together to actually build that raft but that's a very minor thing yeah i'm talking about bamboo uh couldn't they improve the water catchment system by using bamboo right bamboo shoots and they they really solved that problem we solved a lot of problems and uh there's a statement about that i i suspect that without without um having the raft and not caring about the raft the two of them could have lived in that island for a long time and because they had worked out the systems of giving nutrition and water and so forth anyway we're we're out of time shackley raffetto judge shackley raffetto captain shackley raffetto and and and mike lily uh general attorney general mike lily and captain mike lily thank you very much for joining us today it's been a great discussion a great review of a great movie aloha if you liked this show why don't you give us a like or subscribe to our channel thanks so much