CHILDREN UNTOLD is a masterpiece. It’s a staggering work that is unlike anything that I’ve run across regarding not only the aftermath of the Second World War in Japan but also on the aftermath of war anywhere. It is a film that foesn't gloss over how people thought before the wr doesn't instantly change when the war ends. It is a film that seems at times like a deep novel and at other times like a movie, but it uses the shipping tones to show us simply how war changes us.
The film begins as the war is winding down. Kotoko is at a school in the country. She has not heard from her parents in a while. Her brother is off fighting the war. She loves music. She is also a child of Japan and wishes she were a boy so she could fight and die for its glory. The end of the war comes and she is sent home. With no one to claim her she is left to drift. Things happen and in order to survive she dresses as a boy, eventually falling in with a gang of kids.
While there is no doubt the film could grittier and more realistic, the film has other things on its mind. It doesn’t want to show us just the physical damage, but instead it wants us to see the psychic damage. Yes, things are bright and colorful but insideKotoko is dead. I realized how brilliant the film was early in the film when Kotoko fights her way to see what everyone is looking at in the canal. The camera doesn’t show us, it simply shows us her reaction which is infinitely more crushing since we are focused on what this mean for Kotoko.
Ami Koyae‘s performance as Kotoko is towering. Yes, a large portion of it is not showing emotion, and she’s good at that, she keeps it all inside and if you really watch you can see her dying inside, but at the same time when she breaks, and her emotion comes to the surface we are reduced to tears since we see life returning to the little girl.
I was rocked.
And yes, the film often looks like a big budget Hollywood film but understand it’s intentional. Writer director Miwa Nishikawa is using the form and conventions to tell her underlying story. She is not trying to tell the literal truth, after all some of what Kotoko experiences would be bleaker, but that is not what Nishikawa is getting at. She wants to keep us focused in Kotoko‘s journey and she knows that we can fill in the bits around the edges. She wants us focused on what she is telling us so she shows us just what we need to see. Additionally, this is not film that is purely focused on darkness. This is a film about a young girl going into a dark place and starting to come out on the other side. She is not intact on the other end.
I had a thought about halfway in that perhaps the film should have been less bright and darker, but I quickly realized that the film would not have worked. This story has to be told this way for it to work.
If you want to know what this is like imagine CHILDREN UNTOLD as blood relative GODZILLA MINUS ONE. How we see the post war world, minus Godzilla, is how we see it here. Truth be told this would be an awesome double feature with the Godzilla film.
One of the truly great films of 2026- you must see this film
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