The
final days of World War II in the Pacific are brought to life in “Apocalypse ’45,”
the latest documentary from the makers of “The Cold Blue” released by Kino
Lorber. Like its predecessor, “Apocalypse ‘45” (released in 2019) uses rarely seen
color movies filmed during the war to create a narrative, in this case the
final months of World War II. Watching this movie took my breath away and benefits
from the narration by the men who were there. The color film makes the war come
alive and is more real than in any of the scores of black and white documentary
movies about World War II.
The
movie tells parallel stories, one with the striking color film and the other
with the insightful narration. Both the color film and the narration are
blended into an alloy creating a new story of the last year of World War II in
the Pacific. As America got closer to the Japanese homeland, the soldiers and
civilians became more desperate. The soldiers were ordered to fight to the
death while Japanese propaganda ensured the civilians would choose suicide to
surrender. Graphic color footage of Japanese soldiers burning to death and
civilians jumping to their deaths from cliffs are seen for the first time in
decades in color because they were deemed too graphic for wartime and post-war American
audiences. 1945 was also the year of the Kamikaze. The Japanese pilots received
just enough training to fly their explosive-filled aircraft into American
ships.
While
the format of using the recorded recollections of WWII military veteransi s not
unique to this movie, each face and voice is
unique and a testament to the horrors of war. Many veterans of this era are
now in their 90s and time has mellowed their perceptions of war and their
former enemy. One of the voices is a Japanese civilian, just a boy when the
atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. He provides his first person account of
that day and the aftermath which is juxtaposed with then censored color footage
of the bomb’s devastation. Everyone, military veteran and civilian alike, are
survivors of an apocalypse.
The
Kino Lorber Blu-ray looks and sounds terrific and this release is the extended
director’s cut which clocks in at 104 minutes. Released to theaters in August 2020,
Erick Nelson and his team did a remarkable job restoring the color film which
has not been seen for over half a century. Special mention must be made
regarding the score by Mark Leggett who provides an additional dramatic element
to the film. The disc contains nearly 90 minutes of supplements including the
trailers for this film and “The Cold Blue,” a restoration comparison and three
documentaries; “Ford at Pearl” which is a new featurette using John Ford’s 1942
color footage filmed at Pearl Harbor, “To the Shores of Iwo Jima” and “The Last
Bomb” from 1945. “Apocalypse ‘45” is highly recommended viewing along with its companion,
“The Cold Blue.”