Onoda and the Magellan Movies

While looking For Old Movies, I discovered this Gem:

During the final months of World War II, Lieutenant Hiroo Onoda was stationed on Lubang Island in the Philippines and given orders to defend the territory until reinforcements arrived.

Remarkably, unaware that the war had ended, Onoda remained hidden in the dense jungle for nearly three decades.

Despite repeated attempts to inform him the war was over, Onoda dismissed all news as enemy propaganda.

His existence was only confirmed in 1974 when traveler Norio Suzuki tracked him down.

Onoda surrendered only when his former commanding officer personally relieved him of duty.

Upon returning to Japan, he was greeted as a hero, capturing international attention and symbolizing extreme loyalty and resilience.

His incredible story inspired a bestselling memoir and a critically acclaimed film, “Onoda: 10,000 Nights in the Jungle.”

Onoda: 10,000 Nights in the Jungle(Japanese: ONODA 一万夜を越えて, Hepburn: Onoda: Ichiman'ya o Koete; lit."Onoda: Over ten thousand nights", French: Onoda, 10 000 nuits dans la jungle) is a 2021 war drama film directed by Arthur Harari and co-written with Vincent Poymiro, with the collaboration of Bernard Cendron. It is inspired by the life of Hiroo Onoda (Yuya Endo) a Japanese soldier who refused to believe that World War II had ended and continued to fight on a remote Philippine island until 1974.

It is an international co-production between France, Japan, Germany, Belgium, Italy, and Cambodia. And was particularly inspired by Cendron and Gérard Chenu's 1974 biography Onoda, seul en guerre dans la jungle, Cendron's archives, and Harari's conversations with the author. Harari did not base it on Onoda's own memoir; he considers the film to be fiction inspired by history rather than a biographical book.The film had its world premiere at the Un Certain Regard section of the 2021 Cannes Film Festival, on 7 July 2021. It was theatrically released in France on 21 July 2021, and in Japan on 8 October 2021. It was received with critical acclaim, winning Best Original Screenplay at the 47th César Awards.

Critical reception

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 97% of 35 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 7.70/10. The website's consensus reads: "With absorbing patience and palpable empathy, Onoda: 10,000 Nights in the Jungle finds poignant drama in one real-life soldier's stubborn pursuit of honor." Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 78 out of 100, based on 12 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.

On RogerEbert.com, Ben Kenigsburg writes: "Technically, "Onoda"... is a biopic, but it never plays like one. This austere, bleak, occasionally even darkly funny film is, at nearly three hours, more like an absurdist slow burn." James Lattimer, writing for Sight and Sound, called it "...a nearly three-hour wannabe existentialist war drama intended as an exercise in the sort of big-screen immersion that has been impossible of late... [T]he film's humdrum dramatization lacks the necessary visual or narrative finesse to keep viewers absorbed."

Accolades

The film won the Prix Louis-Delluc for 2021. At the 11th Magritte Awards, it received a nomination in the category of Best Foreign Film in Coproducti

The Movie is free from TUBI.. It's quite long almost 3 hours, It may be boring to those people whose lives were not directly affected by the Japanese-American War in the Philippines, 1941-1945. But to me, it is nostalgia time again,    

My Food For Thought for Today:

https://www.facebook.com/reel/4084237285150626

Lastly, The Movie-Magellan

#LavDiaz’s film “Magellan”, the Philippines’ official Oscars entry for Best International Feature Film, won the Golden Spike (Best Picture) at the 70th Valladolid International Film Festival (SEMINCI) in Spain.

It shared the top honor with Kelly Reichardt’s “The Mastermind.” The jury praised “Magellan” for its powerful reimagining of colonial history, stunning visuals, and bold storytelling that connects the past with the present.

The Film Academy of the Philippines celebrated the win, calling it a proud moment for Filipino cinema. The movie, starring Gael García Bernal as Ferdinand Magellan and Ronnie Lazaro as Rajah Humabon, premiered at Cannes 2025 before its release in the Philippines.