Marching On

Tomu Uchida's charming and surprisingly personal early film about a farmer's son consumed by the dream of flight. Obsessed with his balsa-and-paper model airplanes and with visions of soaring above the constraints of rural life, the boy's passion puts him at odds with his practical family and the expectations of his community. Uchida, who would later become one of Japan's most respected directors of period dramas, here shows a lyrical, tender side — the flight sequences, achieved with inventive in-camera effects, capture the giddy joy of imagination taking wing. The film is a delightful window into the aspirations and daily rhythms of early Showa-era rural Japan, and a reminder that the urge to fly — literally and figuratively — is one of cinema's most universal themes.