BIRTHDAY BOY

In a Korean village during the Korean War, a boy was playing by himself on his birthday, imagining himself fighting in the front line alongside his father, who has been sent to the battlefront. He is too young to under- stand the meaning of the parcel which has arrived conveying his father’s remains. The most moving scene comes when the boy places a screw taken from a crashed fighter onto a rail track and waits for the train to come. I admire the creator’s skill in enlarging the natural desire for “bravery” into a common expression for children of any country in the world through the symbolism inherent to animation. This is a film that looms far above the standard set by many other more overt anti-war films.