THE HUMAN CONDITION d: Masaki Kobayashi
The Human Condition Trilogy
No Greater Love (1959), The Road to Eternity (1959), A Soldier’s Prayer (1961)
Direction: Masaki Kobayashi
Screenplay: Zenzo Matsuyama and Masaki Kobayashi; from Jumpei Gomikawa’s novel
Cast: Tatsuya Nakadai, Michiyo Aratama
Michiyo Aratama, Tatsuya Nakadai in The Human Condition
Masaki Kobayashi’s The Human Condition, based on Jumpei Gomikawa’s novel, is probably as well known for its scope and scale as for any other reason. Originally released as three films — No Greater Love (1959), The Road to Eternity (1959), and A Soldier’s Prayer (1961) — Criterion has packaged everything together as one massive, nine-and-a-half-hour opus chronicling the adventures of Kaji (Tatsuya Nakadai), a young Japanese unwillingly participating in the Imperial Army in World War II. The film’s themes, subject matter and generally high quality make it easy to overrate, but even if it were half as good as it is, The Human Condition would still be a worthy example of Japan’s most fertile cinematic period, as well as an interesting historical document.
In No Greater Love, Kaji is introduced as an idealistic, educated labor specialist on the verge of marrying his sweetheart Michiko (Michiyo Aratama). Having garnered a reprieve from military service due to the nature of his work, he is sent to occupied Manchuria to introduce more humane (and, he thinks, necessarily more efficient) labor management techniques to the work camps there. Bringing Michiko along, he encounters resistance from the camp boss, his immediate superiors, his immediate subordinates, the military representatives and even, indirectly, from the workers and prisoners themselves.
Surprisingly large portions of No Greater Love are given over to the supporting characters, whose schemes and machinations drive the plot more than Kaji’s more reactive idealism. This results in a more novelistic scope and fully fleshed-out context for the story; No Greater Love thus works as its own film probably better than the other two entries.
After a great deal of frustration and failure, Kaji inadvertently instigates a minor uprising on the part of the Chinese POWs; he is then jailed, loses his military exemption and is subsequently drafted. (For the sake of the readers who haven’t seen the films yet, as well as those who don’t feel like trudging through a 30,000-word review, I’m being deliberately vague in my plot summary.)
The Road to Eternity chronicles Kaji’s military service which, unfortunately for him, takes place during the demoralizing last years of the war. Though hardly enthusiastic about army life, his natural diligence and competence carry him through basic training and, at first, spare him from all but mild contempt from his superiors. However, his seemingly innate attraction to lost causes spurs him to befriend a hopelessly clumsy and weak fellow private. His efforts to protect the man from abuse at the hands of the bullying officers in his unit attracts the wrong kind of attention; once again, Kaji finds himself at the bottom of a particularly brutal pecking order.
Matters do not improve when he receives his commission as commander of a unit of elderly and infirm trench-diggers — the neighboring artillery squad outdoes everyone else up to this point in their zeal for physically and mentally torturing the luckless hero. The film’s climax comes when Kaji is forced to do the one thing he’d most hoped to avoid in his soldiering career: fight in a battle. He does so valiantly but in vain, as most of his men are wiped out by the advancing Soviet army. (I should note here that the battle sequence is impressively done, featuring some particularly good stunt work — Nakadai bravely allows a tank to roll over his foxhole and dummy shells explode disconcertingly close to the other actors.) The Road to Eternity fades out with the war lost and Kaji half-crazed at what he’s been forced to do by the stresses of battle.
A Soldier’s Prayer is different from its predecessors in significant ways. It’s far more episodic in nature, following Kaji, his surviving men and various other refugees, soldiers and hangers-on through the anarchic post-war Chinese countryside. Kaji’s ultimate goal is to cross into southern Manchuria, where he hopes to reunite with Michiko (seen only very briefly in this film). Distractions abound, though, as he is forced to deal with a host of more pressing survival concerns. Characters, likewise, are not fixed, joining his quest for a few scenes and dropping out for good shortly thereafter.
Kaji and his band endure trial after trial, only to fall into the hands of the Soviets. The last major segment of the film details Kaji’s imprisonment in a forced-labor camp (bringing him full circle from where he began in the beginning of the first film) and his mistreatment at the hands of the Japanese officer appointed to watch over the defeated prisoners. Finally unable to absorb any more punishment, Kaji snaps, gruesomely murders the officer and escapes. He continues his journey home in a most degraded, barely human state: unshaven, starved, clad in rags, unable even to speak. I’ll stop before I reach the very final scenes of the film, but I will say that they’re, tonally, of a piece with the rest of the trilogy.
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Tags: A Soldier's Prayer, Classic Movies, DVDs, Film Reviews, Masaki Kobayashi, Michiyo Aratama, No Greater Love, Tatsuya Nakadai, The Criterion Collection, The Human Condition, The Road to Eternity, War Movies
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