The Human Condition
Masaki Kobayashi
Initial release:
I: No Greater Love:
January 15, 1959 (Japan)
II: Road to Eternity:
November 20, 1959 (Japan)
III: A Soldier's Prayer
January 28, 1961 (Japan)
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| I: No Greater Love |
What do Roberto Rossellini, Andrzej Wajda, and Masaki Kobayashi have in common? Each of them created, between 1945 and 1961, a trilogy of World War II-themed films directly influenced by their experiences in that conflict. From Rossellini: Rome, Open City, Paisan, and Germany, Year Zero; from Wajda: A Generation; Kanal; and Ashes and Diamonds. And finally, Kobayashi's The Human Condition, split into three parts: No Greater Love, Road to Eternity, and A Soldier's Prayer. And like the Italian Neo-Realist trilogy or the Polish Socialist Realism trilogy, so too does The Human Condition present an uncompromisingly bleak, but clear-eyed, view of war.
Beginning sometime in 1942 or 1943, The Human Condition follows Kaji (no first name given,) a wide-eyed idealist living in Japanese-occupied Manchuria, from his first real exposure to the reality of human cruelty while in charge of a labor camp, to the never-ending abuse as a soldier in the Imperial Japanese Army as the war effort collapses in the final days of the conflict, and finally to the deep misery of being a prisoner of war in Soviet hands.
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| II: Road to Eternity |
Each film is three hours or more in length, making for a nearly ten-hour journey through the darkest depths of humanity. Shooting in stunning black and white, Kobayashi rather meticulously adapts Junpei Gomikawa's semi-autobiographical novel of the same name, infusing his film with the deep pessimism of a war survivor. Where some films might shy away from the darker parts of the cultures from whence they come, The Human Condition is in your face with it. The violence and cruelty of Imperial Japan is not glossed over; Japanese characters, facing the consequences of their nation's imperialist ambitions, are not framed as smol bean uwu victims. They are hard-bitten, bitter people, knowing that their country is responsible for endless misery but powerless to do anything about it; some resist it, most embrace it. Life in Imperial Japan is proof that right-wing ideology is domestic abuse at scale; the shouting and beatings never end, not even in a supposedly safe place like a hospital. Even Kaji, in the end, becomes a murderer, killing not just to survive, but to mete out vengeance on a man who, frankly speaking, deserves worse than to drown in a latrine trench.
Kaji is a tragic character; his beliefs in the good in humanity only make him a target. Ostracized and bullied by his superiors and comrades-in-arms, his attempts to defend the weak only make things worse. He cannot stop one of his only friends in the army from committing suicide after intense bullying, in a sequence that seems to anticipate Full Metal Jacket. Little by little, he is beaten down into a bitter, sullen, jaded soldier, driven only by his desire to see his wife again.
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| III: A Soldier's Prayer |
The vast plains of Manchuria are depicted in their full hostility to the Imperial project; by the third film, the fields and forests become characters in themselves, a hostile, almost post-apocalyptic wasteland roamed by Imperial Japanese refugees, Chinese partisans and Soviet death squads. Vast and beautifully empty, there's an almost John Ford-esque feeling to this war-blasted world. And it is this bleak world that Kaji's final scenes take place in, far from home with no further path forward.
Cinema in the 1950s was marked by a deep pessimism; this was the era of film noir, Cold War paranoia, and grappling with the trauma of World War II. The Human Condition belongs here, alongside films like Paths of Glory, or The Seventh Seal. All plumb the depths of humanity's dark side, all expose the true horrors of... well, the human condition.