THE HUMAN CONDITION Review II
THE HUMAN CONDITION Review: Part I
The Human Condition is often referred to short-handily as an anti-war or anti-military film. That’s a fair characterization as far as it goes, but it doesn’t go far enough. What Kobayashi’s film does is deflate any and all of the ideologies bequeathed to us by the modern world, showing them up as pernicious myths. Kaji’s belief that labor can be managed humanely and rationally is swept away by his time in the work camps; his patriotism, by the conduct of the Japanese military; his sympathy for socialism, by his encounter with the tender mercies of the Red Army. Even his pacifism, which many mistakenly believe to be the theme of these films, fails him on a number of occasions, proving to be wholly inadequate, both morally and practically, to the brutal situation he finds himself in.
By the end of the third film, Kaji continues his struggle not for any set of ideals, but for his devotion to Michiko. This anti-ideological preference for the concrete over the abstract — a specific person as opposed to "the people" — represents the only thing worth fighting for in the world of the film, even if that effort is likely to end in defeat and futility. (Kobayashi gives visual expression to this notion with a recurring image, lifted from Greek myth (or maybe Camus?), of figures trudging up and down steep inclines.) Of course, this is itself an ideology, one that was fashionable in an exhausted post-war world. But The Human Condition comes by its bleak existentialism honestly, meting out punishment to its naive protagonist for nearly the whole of its running time.
Tatsuya Nakadai, Michiyo Aratama
Still, as nine-and-a-half hours of a butterfly being broken on a wheel goes, the trilogy is well-paced and well-written enough that my marathon two-day viewing session was never less than engaging. The large cast does well with its many small parts, and Nakadai, though apparently early in his career at this point, carries this mammoth movie admirably, keeping his dignity in a character that could easily have come off as simply irritating and pathetic.
Some other aspects of the film don’t fare quite as well. It may be perverse to say this, but I don’t think Kobayashi shows any great aptitude for the widescreen format (in this case "Grandscope", the studio Shochiku’s version of CinemaScope) — at least not here. The many shots of small groups of men (officials in meetings, soldiers gathered in packs, laborers laboring) are well-balanced and do a fair job of spreading the players across the frame, but are often too wide and too static. I confess that I sometimes lost track of who was speaking to whom during scenes staged like this, an effect that I can’t imagine was intentional.
However, things improve markedly in A Soldier’s Prayer — the looser structure seems to free Kobayashi stylistically. The relatively staid presentation of the first two parts is shaken up by voice-over narration, ostentatiously canted angles, and abrupt and disconcerting transitions between scenes. This is the Kobayashi who would go on to make less grandiose but, frankly, better movies like Harakiri and Samurai Rebellion.
Criterion has done a typically excellent job of presentation. The image is nice and sharp, with particularly fine variation in the grayscale; the sound, especially the stereo tracks of A Soldier’s Prayer (the other two are in mono), is as good as you’re likely to hear from a 50-year-old recording. A fourth disc is devoted to extras: trailers for the three films (each of which prominently mentions cinematographer Yoshio Miyajima), and interviews with Kobayashi, Nakadai and Human Condition fan Masahiro Shinoda are all interesting and worth a look. A short essay by Philip Kemp is included in place of commentary tracks.
Photos: Courtesy of the Criterion Collection
© Dan Erdman
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Tags: Classic Movies, DVDs, Film Reviews, Masaki Kobayashi, Tatsuya Nakadai, The Criterion Collection, The Human Condition
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