Kinji Fukasaku
Fukkatsu no hi

Between 1918 and 1920, an influenza epidemic, nicknamed 'Spanish flu', spread worldwide and within two years killed between 50 and 100 million people. The flu was undoubtedly the greatest pandemic in human history and in some communities even reached a mortality rate of 70%. Primarily affected were young people between the ages of 18 and 30. According to a theory, I quote those which are general sources as I have no expertise in this field, this was due to the fact that this particular generation was not 'covered' by certain antibodies developed in older individuals earlier with the development of another pandemic at the end of the 1800s called 'Russian flu'. It is believed that in any case, often the deaths were not directly caused by the flu but by secondary lung infections, of bacterial origin, which could not be treated at the time due to the absence of antibiotics.

Only in 1997, with the spread of the infectious disease worldwide, was it definitively demonstrated that the virus known as 'avian flu' can be transmitted to humans. The influenza virus affects different species of wild and domestic birds. We do not have precise data on the victims, but it is believed that - although this constituted a real 'alert' in 1997 - from that year until now in Italy there have been as many as six epidemic cases.

Other variables of the same nature, namely those determined by similar cases and concerning, as in the previous case, the interaction between humans and nature, therefore also issues of a 'food' nature, are the so-called 'Mad Cow' disease and 'Swine Flu', which in 2009 in Italy resulted in 229 victims, a high number but still very low in percentage (0.005%) compared to the number of cases (estimated to be over four million).

SARS ('Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome') was, however, the most lethal of the post-war epidemics and the one that more than any other recalled the nightmare of the Spanish flu. We are in 2002 when this atypical form of pneumonia first appears in the province of Guangdong, Canton, China. The epidemic spread to various parts of the world and also to Italy, where among the victims was virologist Carlo Urbani, who had discovered the virus and was infected a few months earlier. The final toll concerned only Southeast Asia and Canada with 8,000 cases of infection and 880 deaths.

This is a film that has an important story and that presents the theme of the spread of a deadly pandemic in a convincing way as the plot unfolds, and for this reason, it is perhaps one of the last post-apocalyptic films released in the era of the Cold War, where such scenarios seemed to suddenly become something concrete and a real danger that, due to the division of the world into two parts, the arms race, would lead mankind to self-destruction.

It was 1980 when film producer Haruki Kudokawa, still one of the big names in the industry in his country today, decided to revive Japanese cinema with this science fiction film, which at the time was the most expensive movie ever distributed in the history of Japanese cinema.

'Ultimo rifugio: Antartide' or 'Fukkatsu no hi' (literally: 'The Day of Resurrection') is written and directed by Kinji Fukasaku, a director famous for being the co-director of 'Tora! Tora! Tora!' with the American Richard Fleischer and one of the many references for Quentin Tarantino. The younger ones probably know him for the science fiction thriller 'Battle Royale' aka 'Batoru Rowaiauru' of 2000, a film as controversial as it has become a real cult object in Japan as well as in the rest of the world.

'Fukkatsu no hi' boasts an important cast with leading U.S. film actors such as Glenn Gord, Robert Vaughn, Henry Silva, and the former baseball star Chuck Connors, besides an old fox like George Kennedy. In addition to the presence of Japanese actors, including notably Masao Kusakari, in the role of Dr. Shuzo Yoshizumi who can probably be considered as the leading actor of a story that, after all, features what can be considered predominantly as a plurality of main actors, given also the multiplicity of the stories told.

The film is based on a 1964 novel by Sayo Komatsu, pseudonym of Minoru Komatsu, a contemporary Japanese science fiction writer who passed away in July 2011, and is essentially divided into three parts. The first part narrates the prelude and how the virus spreads virally and uncontrollably worldwide; the second tells how the few survivors, in Antarctica, try to organize a new society and lay the foundations for a 'new world'; the third is about the expedition of American secret service captain McCloud and Dr. Yoshizumi to Washington to prevent what could be a new nuclear apocalypse whose consequence would also destroy the Palmer Station in Antarctica.

The story begins in East Germany in 1982, when Dr. Krause hands over to a group of American secret agents a vial containing a virus named MM88, accidentally created and defined by the doctor himself as the 'Frankenstein of medicine' because it is practically capable of enhancing the virulence of any other virus or bacterium with which it comes into contact.

Escaping a firefight against East German secret services, the Americans flee by plane, but it crashes in the Alps, releasing the contents of the vial containing the MM88 virus. Soon, a terrifying pandemic called 'Italian flu' (since the first cases are actually recorded in Italy, there are some scenes shot in the city of Milan) spreads worldwide.

In many countries around the world, a state of emergency is declared, and martial law enacted, and the film focuses particularly on the United States, where President Richardson (Glenn Ford) discovers what happened due to the responsibility of the American secret services and, together with Senator Barkley (Robert Vaughn), tries to find a solution to what is a desperate situation. The president endeavors to do his best, violently and aggressively opposed by the military institution leaders who would like to close the borders and launch a nuclear attack against the 'enemies', until in a situation of total and irreparable disaster, a hunch, suggested to him by Senator Barkley on his deathbed, prompts him to contact the Antarctic bases, where 863 people (855 men and 8 women) live, and he informs them that they are the last representatives of the human race, because only in those frigid temperatures, persistently below zero, can the virus not spread in any way.

Thus, a 'Federal Council of Antarctica' is formed, where everyone will try to overcome their resistances and hostilities towards the other survivors, and where the various issues to be addressed are studied, including survival and also the repopulation of the planet.

But it seems that beyond the virus's spread, the match between the different world powers, particularly the United States and the USSR, continues even after the end of the world as it was known, and the risk of an earthquake on the U.S. East Coast could trigger an automated process leading to an 'exchange' of missiles between the American and Russian nuclear arsenals, with one of the Soviet missiles specially programmed in case to hit the Palmer Station in Antarctica, mistakenly considered a military base.

American secret service captain McCloud and Japanese scientist Yoshizmi thus embark on the HMS Nereid of British Admiral Conway heading towards Washington to prevent the irreparable from happening in a series of adventurous events in a now deserted U.S. capital and inside a ghostly White House populated only by ghosts.

'Fukkatsu no hi' is a film with apocalyptic content. The theme of the deadly pandemic's spread is proposed in a particular historical context where the world was still divided into two parts, and cooperation between the different nations was a real 'utopia' compared to what is today's reality, where, although we are still far from what could be a conscious international community, significant steps forward have certainly been made (the relatively contained management of the epidemics I mentioned at the beginning of the review can be considered a positive signal in this sense).

It is a film where all the things at the end seem to lead to the definitive destruction of the human race, but where, however, at the end and in the introduction to the film, particularly evocative and reminiscent of certain hallucinogenic fascinations worthy of Alejandro Jodorowsky, the director leaves open a glimmer of 'resurrection' and to men still the possibility of having 'that bit of time' necessary to continue making history and possibly without repeating the great mistakes made in the past.