Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		4.0
Overall		4.0

Onoda: 10,000 Nights in the Jungle Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman January 1, 2023

They say that truth is stranger than fiction, but does that maxim still hold true for what a filmmaker overtly states is "fictionalized truth"? The story of Hiroo Onoda has been told before, including by Onoda himself, but kind of ironically given its Japanese roots, it's always had something of a Rashomon quality to it, in that details may have rather significantly varied depending upon whom was doing the telling. That may have played into co-writer and director Arthur Harari's decision to not hew completely strictly to a perhaps debatable historical record, which may bother some armchair fact checkers, but which probably doesn't seriously impede this film's rather startling account of one of the infamous "Japanese holdouts", soldiers (typically in isolated locations) who either refused to surrender or who simply didn't believe World War II was over.

This particular "version" of Onoda's story begins in 1974, with the arrival of a young man who might be compared to the "ethnomusicologist" at the center of Oka!, and who in fact sets up a cassette player (remember those?) in the jungles of the Philippine island of Lubang which then plays an old jingoistic anthem which serves as almost a siren call to elderly Onoda (Kanji Tsuda). The tune actually seems to spark memories for the old guy, and the film then begins the first of several flashback sequences which detail a much younger Onoda (Yuya Endo) getting swept up in the rampant nationalistic fervor that was part and parcel of Japan in the World War II era. When young Onoda finds out he's spectacularly ill equipped to be a kamikazi pilot, he's given another assignment, which ultimately brings him to the Philippines.

The story then begins to address a perhaps increasingly incredible tale that finds Onoda and an initial cohort refusing to believe that Japan has surrendered. Suffice it to say that for a number of reasons this "brigade" sees dwindling numbers, until only Onoda and another soldier named Kozuka (played by Yuya Matsuura and Tetsuya Chiba at various ages, since the story unfurls over so many decades) are left. The film gets into what might be termed an increasingly paranoiac stance at least on the part of Onoda, who, when repeatedly confronted with seeming "proof" that hostilities have ceased, simply chalks it up to what we in modern parlance might term "fake news".

There are a couple of things Onoda either intentionally or unintentionally never really gets into, the first of which is how Onoda was perceived in Japan after his unlikely "surrender" in 1974 (incredibly, he was only the penultimate Japanese soldier to hold out this long, there was one more who surrendered a few months later in another location). But there are at least some accounts of this tale which indicate Onoda's time on Lubang was often fraught with violence, and not just toward a few innocent animals seen as likely food sources. Still, Onoda has some really provocative subtext(s) which explore a number of angles, including the meaning of "heroism", the sometimes absurd lengths "loyalty" or "nationalism" can lead some people to experience, and, ultimately, the relentless and ultimately tragic solitude of a weathered old man whose own arguable delusions have led to his self imposed isolation.

Onoda: 10,000 Nights in the Jungle Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Onoda: 10,000 Nights in the Jungle is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Dark Star Pictures with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.85:1. The IMDb lists a Red capture at a source resolution of 5K, which leads me to believe this may have had a 4K DI. One way or the other, despite some overt stylization of the image, including noticeable if tightly resolved digital grain and sometimes kind of anemic contrast, detail levels are consistently strong throughout the presentation. The contrast issue can lead to a slightly blanched looking image which is probably most noticeable in some of the outdoor jungle footage. A few nighttime or dimly lit scenes, including a couple of cave sequences that seem to have been graded towards blue, may not offer the same excellent levels of fine detail, but it's a minimal deficit. Close-ups provide more than ample fine detail levels throughout the presentation.

Onoda: 10,000 Nights in the Jungle Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Onoda: 10,000 Nights in the Jungle features a nicely immersive DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track that benefits from the glut of outdoor material the film offers, with a resultant surplus of ambient environmental sounds populating the side and rear channels. An evocative score by a variety of composers (the music featurette gets into the almost preposterous number of international producing entities involved in the film, which in turn resulted in a similarly global array of musicians working on the project) also helps to regularly engage the surround channels. Dialogue is rendered cleanly and clearly throughout. English subtitles are forced.

Onoda: 10,000 Nights in the Jungle Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Casting Videos

  The Long Night (HD; 22:03)

  
  

  Haiku "Conspiracy Theory" (HD; 8:34)

  
  

  Silent Solo (HD; 8:33)

• Conversations feature Arthur Harari and other production personnel:

  The Music (HD; 31:10)

  
  

  The Image (HD; 25:17)

  
  

  The Script (HD; 37:13)

• Theatrical Trailer (HD; 2:13)

Additionally trailers for other releases from Dark Star are included.

Onoda: 10,000 Nights in the Jungle Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Onoda: 10,000 Nights in the Jungle clocks in at close to three hours, and while that helps to establish the veritable "slog" Onoda put himself through, it may also work against the film's narrative momentum, which may also have some inherent "interruptions" in that the film has to traverse a rather wide timespan to even provide the basics of the story. Still, this is an amazing piece that, while arguably not 100% "factual", still is viscerally compelling and really almost frankly unbelievable at times. Technical merits are solid and the supplements are unusually in depth and enjoyable. Highly recommended.