The Great War of Archimedes

The Japanese navy, 1933. Some admirals want an enormous battleship, others believe the future belongs to aircraft carriers. To expose the fraud in the project's budget, the second group recruits a civilian mathematician. The subject is not war but procurement. The film is not interested in heroism. It is interested in the politics of numbers: the cost of a ship is deliberately understated, and the only way to disprove it is to do the sums again. The tension comes out of rulers, measurements and meeting rooms. The form frames this with an opening sequence: the sinking of the Yamato. Because Takashi Yamazaki directs the effects himself, that sequence sits on top of the film without destroying the bureaucratic tone of everything after it. The source is Norifusa Mita's 2015 manga Archimedes no Taisen. The film took ¥1.93 billion in Japan. Masaki Suda plays the mathematician, with Minami Hamabe and Tasuku Emoto in support. Who it is for: viewers interested in prewar Japanese politics and in war films with an unusual structure. Who it is not for: anyone expecting action. Two hours in the middle are spent arguing about arithmetic, and that is on purpose.