Spoonatects
Am i the only one who thinks........Average?
Solidrariol
Am I Missing Something?
Dana
An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.
Ricc0
"No Greater Love" is the first part of the 9 hours 47 minutes trilogy directed by Masaki Kobayashi based on the six-volume novel by Junpei Gomikawa. A captivating, haunting, and touching anti-war epic film where Kobayashi masterfully criticizes and confronts the Japanese practices and applications via WW2 through a self-righteous character who is trying to "catch the train of humanism before it's too late".Kaji is a socialist and a pacifist with great morals. His self- righteousness is shown from the first beginning when he refuses to sleep with his girlfriend for the concern of being enlisted soon in the army and not be able to fulfill his duties towards her. He has his own theories and principles also in dealing with work environment and laborers. He gets a job offer to be a supervisor in an iron mine in a small Manchurian village. Since he opposes war, he accepts it as his only way out of conscription. He also gets to be with his girlfriend (they soon marry).Kaji now in his new work faces moral dilemmas that prove day by day not to be easier than those he was going to face in the military. He struggles with the old, brutal, and oppressive mentalities. Things get nastier when 600 Chinese men are brought to the mine as prisoners of war.. plots, deceptions, racism, torture.. the list goes on. Many try to shake his convictions by convincing him that the theories may prove wrong when applied, and also that peace theories do not apply in war time. His answer was that either the theories are wrong or they were faultily applied. Yet, even his wife doubts his intentions for a moment.. will he surrender?Kobayashi's humanist film is a delicate study of the human psychology during hardships and the capabilities of the man to stand still and fight for what is right. It is also a sincere revision to a difficult era in Japanese history, reacting responsibly in opening a new page for the coming generations. "It's not my fault that I'm Japanese.. yet, it's my worst crime that I am", states Kaji. What can we do to deserve this beautiful name "man", one prisoner ask him.Kaji represents in his fight to become the man not the beast all humanity not only of course the Japanese.. every generation from the first beginning. The masterful Kobayashi contributes greatly to this epic film with extraordinary execution.. and Tatsuya Nakadai was a great choice for the leading role. A piece of art considered by many to be one of the greatest ever.
mevmijaumau
The Human Condition (Ningen no jôken) is a 9,5 hour long epic film trilogy directed by Masaki Kobayashi, based on the six volume novel by Junpei Gomikawa. The trilogy stays true to the novel's composition by being divided into six parts, meaning that each of the three installments are split in two parts, in between which are intermissions. Both parts in the first film begin with the same opening credits sequence, showing us some stoneworks portraying dramatic imagery (the similar intro opens all three films). The three movies, each long 3 hours or more, are called No Greater Love, Road to Eternity and A Soldier's Prayer.No Greater Love introduces the main character Kaji, a pacifist during the chaotic mess that was Japan during WW2. To avoid being drafted, he moves to Manchuria with his wife, where he becomes a labor camp supervisor and clashes with the oppressive nature of camp officials and their lower-ranked men.Masaki Kobayashi's films often feature individuals against an oppressive and totalitarian system, be it the feudal Japan in Harakiri and Samurai Rebellion, or WW2 occupied Manchuria in The Human Condition. Kobayashi himself was drafted into the army and sent to Manchuria during the war, meaning that the character of Kaji is not far away from the director himself. Some people accuse the trilogy to be too melodramatic - well, if that's how Kobayashi saw the situation, and he was there, I don't have much of a big problem over it.Kaji is brilliantly portrayed by Tatsuya Nakadai, one of the most versatile Japanese actors. He handles the role fantastically and lives up to the challenge of carrying the entire 9,5-hour plot on his back. Michiyo Aratama, who played Michiko, is perhaps more well-known for her role in Kobayashi's Kwaidan.The Human Condition offers some brilliant widescreen composition and magnificent B&W imagery, as most Kobayashi films do. The film has some problems, though, most of which are of strictly technical nature. First, some of the violent scenes were filmed awkwardly, like the whipping scene listed under IMDb "Goofs". Second, because the entire cast was Japanese, the Mandarin spoken by the miners is very unrealistic (doesn't bother me personally, but it's still there). Third, the mining conditions are surprisingly underplayed and were even harsher in real life. Fourth, the music is sometimes too annoying, loud and even useless in several scenes.But overall, this is definitely a film you have to check out if you're into Japanese cinema, WW2 films, or epic films in general.8,5/10
Cosmoeticadotcom
The Human Condition has too many technical flaws, goes on too long, and, especially, its first 60% gets annoyingly moralistic and preachy at times (although Kaji does sink into a bit of justifiable depravity by film's end), to be considered an inarguably great film, but so much of the rest of it is assuredly great that it has to be in the argument for greatness, therefore I can term it a near-great film, even if, for many, it will seem an irredeemably depressing film; not unlike Theo Angelopoulos's The Weeping Meadow. This observation is true, but it is not a reason to avoid the film, nor art, because a work of art that depresses is not to say that it is not successful for that, if its depression spurs one on to cogitation over why this is. Also, criticism of the love that Kaji holds for his wife are all based on the assumption that the lead character is supposed to be an idealization of the average man rather than an example of the rare man, the potentially great man, who is denied his due. Therefore, the commonplace qualities of love and fidelity that a superior man holds become, in this misinterpretation, an idealized and unrealistically (capital r) Romantic flaw. But that is the flaw of the critics, not the artist.The film's equivocal excellence is probably no better exemplified than in its portrait of the Japanese Army. On the one hand the film seems to go a bit too light in its portrayal of the Japanese mistreatment of its Chinese victims (for with every passing year it seems that the Japanese Imperial Army made the Nazis seem like rank amateurs in human depravity), yet, on the other hand, the film does a great service in its humanizing of the average Japanese soldier from inhuman automatonic supermen to flawed misfits who often criticize and mock their superiors and the war's rightness. And while it abounds in caricatures and near-caricatures, the film also does an outstanding job of getting to specific moments of intensity (however prosaically- not poetically- rendered) between characters, in what would otherwise seem a mundane interaction. This allows for the speedy introduction of characters and building of empathy with them.The DVD, by The Criterion Collection, is one of the best releases they have had in the last couple of years. I've chided the company for skimping on audio commentaries in recent years, but this film's length, and the fact that it is spread over three disks, pretty much obviates any necessity for a commentary, and even an enthusiastic talking head like Japanese film expert Donald Richie or film critic Roger Ebert (were he healthy) would inevitably spend most of the nine plus hours on dead air. As usual, I wish all black and white films had easier to read subtitles than mere white font, but there are only a few instances of difficult to read wordings. Given that this film had an international release at a time when foreign films were routinely dubbed, it would have been great to have had an English language audio dubbed option, for likely one existed. There is an oddity in that there are Japanese subtitles on the right side of the screen for the Japanese audience, at moments characters speak Chinese. The fourth disk has all the supplements, and while it is missing an extended making of featurette, there are some good moments in interviews conducted with the film's director and star, and a short video bon mot of the film from Japanese filmmaker Masahiro Shinoda. There are some trailers and an insert essay, as well. But, this is there are DVD where the extras are really just that. Even with nothing, this film is worth seeing. It is also a very good restoration, in a 2.35:1 aspect ratio, of the film compared to earlier VHS and DVD releases, many of which split the film into its three parts: No Greater Love (1959), Road To Eternity (1960), and A Soldier's Prayer (1961).The film's cinematography, by Yoshio Miyajima, is always solid, with a few moments of adventure- such as a shot as a tank roars overhead, but it is never spectacular. The scenes shot in a studio often clash with location shots, texturally. As for the use of black and white, no one is liable to confuse this film with the masterworks of an Orson Welles nor Michelangelo Antonioni. The film's score is one of its weakest elements, too often telegraphing 'important' moments. Nakasdai's acting dominates the film, for he is in virtually ever scene, and his slow transmogrification from bleeding heart liberal who sells out to stoic killing machine (he's an excellent soldier despite his avowed humanism) who years for his wife is subtle, believable, and most importantly, lets the viewer empathize with him. The Human Condition is one of those works of art that is not great, but has so much going on, at any moment, that it is not difficult to forgive its flaws- even those that glare, for another excellent or better moment will soon recapture your admiration. And, it's only in true epics that such largess is to be found. Excelsior!
chaos-rampant
I thought Masaki Kobayashi could do no wrong.I really wanted to like this. I even tried to and tried hard. Kobayashi is one of a short list of my favorite directors, also a titan of Japanese cinema by any standard I can think of, but more, I was convinced that if the cathartic tragedy he favoured, one that indicts and devastates, could make the leap from the jidaigekis set in Tokugawa Japan to any other genre, that genre would be the war drama.Set in 1943 Manchuria, WWII in full bloody swing, The Human Condition follows the trials and tribulations in occupied China of Kaji, a young idealist drafted in the service of the Japanese army. He is transferred to the hinterland to work as a supervisor in the ore mines of the area, a place where thousands of Chinese prisoners of war slave away in inhuman conditions for the benefit of the Japanese motherland. Kaji, full of youthful optimism as he is, attempts to befriend the Chinese POW's in an effort to both make their living conditions better but also improve their labour efficiency to appease his demanding military superiors.And there the movie starts crumbling under its own weight. For a film clocking in at 3 hours and 20 minutes, there's really an awful lot of scenes where two or three characters discuss the most obvious things and feelings; not a whole lot of subtext going on, chunks of dialogue delivered right on the nose, all done in generic takes. A story is being played out here but there's no cadence, punctuation, or interesting viewpoint. Worse, the movie is melodrama enough to constitute somewhat of an anachronism; it would have made much more sense coming out in 1949 instead of 1959. Consider the movies Samuel Fuller was making a few years ago, consider that Akira Kurosawa was about to revolutionize the jidaigeki and the alienated drifter a year later with Yojimbo, or the soulcrushing indifference of a stark world portrayed in a film like Fires on the Plain. Speaking of protagonists, it's Kaji, the main character we're called to identify with, played by samurai icon Tatsuya Nakadai before he was even a supporting actor in Yojimbo, who presents the biggest problem. His attitude and worldview of unconditional humanism are all too naive and convenient to hit the right emotional chords. Idenitifying with Kaji's holier-than-thou idealism is hard, not because people like him don't exist in real life, I hope they do, but simply because this kind of clean-cut idealist character doesn't fare well in a dramatic context.Bear with me here. Now every dramatic character (and by extention his actions that forward the plot) has to be defined by and rooted in some sort of inner conflict. In Kaji's case, it's between work (supervising prisoners into forced labour) and ideology (every human being should be treated with dignity and respect). But his ideology brings him into direct conflict with every major Japanese character in the movie; the army officers, his boss, the other supervisors - ruthless people who, in no uncertain terms, could have his head on a plate if they were so inclined. Why Kaji repeatedly goes against everyone even at the risk of his life is never so much as hinted at. If he has nothing to lose, what can he stand to gain from this? What do we, as viewers, learn that we didn't know?Usually some sort of character flaw forces the character to take action in an effort to redeem himself. Kaji's only flaw is his idealism. In that sense, Kaji is more of a martyr or a saint than a real flawed human being whose story is worth telling and the audience investing in. I don't see myself in him, he doesn't meaningfully exist in the world as I know it. It's only natural then that we may become frustrated by his idealistic persistance, a feeling that is shared (ironically) by his antagonists inside the movie (the abusive supervisor and the army officials). If this is a clever trick on Kobayashi's part to have us sympathize with Kaji's enemies (and maybe feel bad about it), then I tip my hat to him. Because it was done at the expense of a movie.Another thing that bothered me was how forced the drama felt at times. For example, near the end (and this is no spoiler that matters), a Chinese prostitute whose prisoner lover was executed by the Japanese, throws rocks at Kaji and calls him "Japanese devil". The only responsibility Kaji had at the execution was that he simply couldn't prevent it from happening. He's not even a military officer, just a labour supervisor. There's no reason for the prostitute to throw rocks at Kaji instead of the real culprits. It seems to happen for no other reason than to milk more sympathy and pity for a character that hasn't earned it. His tolerance only seems to invite more abuse which only reinforces his martyrdom.That's not to say that THC is not without its moments of beauty. Some of the cinema in the film is marvelous, with beautiful landscape shots and certain scenes and images that resonate with emotional power: the starving bodies of Chinese prisoners dropping like flies from train wagons, the lenthy execution scene, a parade of prostitutes visiting the concentration camp.Overall, I'm very disappointed with The Human Condition. Based on the glowing reviews here, I was expecting a masterpiece to equal Kobayashi's other work from the 60's. It turns out THC is a war melodrama that might have been very popular in a devastated post-war Japan that was thirsty for the populist theme of humanism valiantly raising its chin in the face of an oppressive system, but I found it too simplistic and convenient and lacking the sophistication of Kobayashi's epics from the decade to come.
