Kokoda Film Analysis

Alister Grierson’s film Kokoda (2006) is historically accurate to a limited extent. The film is based on the experiences of 39th Battalion fighting against Japanese forces in the 1942 Kokoda Campaign. The representation of the Australian Soldiers and the Japanese Soldiers were in favour of the Australians. Unbiased representation is important to understand both sides of the war. The problems with food and equipment supply do not quite show in the film, although the audience still gets a feel to the sort of troubles the troops had to deal with. The nature of battle between the two opposing armies is not very detailed. One thing the film did accurately represent was the terrain and disease. However this film is still not 100 percent reliable because films are made to be entertaining and dramatic.
The representation of each country is not reliable in the film Kokoda. The Australian troops are shown as nothing but heroes and innocent, while the Japanese, faceless and portrayed as monsters and being ruthless. The audience feels no connection or sympathy for the Japanese because they are never shown their faces or heard speak. Nothing is learnt about the casualties or hardships of the Japanese. The treatment of the native Papuans, nicknamed The Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels was not
The fighting scenes were intense but you only ever saw the ANZACs shooting into the trees. While this may be accurate to show the stealth and technique used by the Japanese, the whole war was not fought like this. It was rarely seen that the Australian and Japanese troop fighting face to face. Pte Kokichi Nishimura of the 144th regiment for the Japanese Imperial Army, recalls “An Australian soldier that I was fighting in hand to hand combat, was barely an adult, more like a young boy. I questioned why I had to kill such a young soldier” (source 4). Grierson does not explore any of the story from the Japanese point of