But in Masaki Kobayashi's massive, epic, ten-hour exploration of Japanese war guilt and self-hatred, The Human Condition, the audience gets as close as possible to the drudgery, pain and moral turpitude of fighting in World War II. The audience never gets wounded, but after ten hours they certainly feel what it's like to have been through the war on the losing side.
Proceeding relentlessly and unflinchingly forward like Erich von Stroheim's Greed, Kobayashi weaves a tapestry of misery, centered upon the well-meaning, humanistic Kaji (Tatsuya Nakadai, in his star-making role), who tries to do good and lessen the wartime pain of soldiers and prisoners of war but, in the end, only makes matters worse. Hated for being Japanese by prisoners, enemy soldiers, and even co-workers and fellow soldiers, Kaji can only muster a self-pitying, 'It is not my fault that I am Japanese yet it is the worst crime that I am.'
The film is divided into three parts and each part has Kaji trying his best but sinking lower and lower. Part 1 charts Kaji's doomed compromise by accepting a job as a labor supervisor for a Japanese company in South Manchuria that employs forced labor and Chinese prisoners of war in order to get a military exemption and avoid serving in the army. But Kaji's too-late defense of prisoners results in Kaji being tortured and shipped out to the army as a private. Part 2 details Kaji in basic training and the first half looks like a run-through for Full Metal Jacket, as Kaji's efforts to help a weak recruit end up with the recruit blowing his brains out. Kaji is then sent to the front with a group of soldiers who proceed to get wiped out in the closing days of the war by a Russian tank attack. In Part 3 Kaji and a small band of stragglers try to wend their way through enemy territory to make their way home with disastrous results for all.
Nakadai's performance builds throughout the film from oft-putting brooding and doom in the first part to a towering and commanding presence by the end of part 3. And to be sure Kaji is a difficult character to play. Kobayashi presents Kaji as a character in conflict, asking if a man of morality and ideals can survive in the totally corrupt and hateful world of total war. Of course, the answer is no. One character remarks to Kaji, 'You're not satisfied until you've dragged everybody up to your level.' By the time Kaji is leading a group of zombielike stragglers to the Chinese border and has already killed numerous soldiers and caused the deaths of many more, he is told, 'Even your ideals seem starved.' That's an understatement.
The Human Condition must have struck home for many Japanese in the early 1960s still dealing with defeat and cultural self-condemnation. Kobayashi's film, connected with events outside of Japan, must also have seemed a radical move for a culture whose films were insular and self-contained. And The Human Condition is beautifully composed in a Fordian widescreen, and (except for some missteps in part 3 with flashbacks and voice-overs that seem like padding) Kobayashi wrings every ounce of pathos from the horrors of war.
But The Human Condition is a film of its time. Seen today, it is still powerful and uncompromising, but it is also strident, tortuous, and hateful. Kobayashi's attitude is summed up in a soldier's definition of mankind: 'What is a man? Not poetry and morality. He's a mass of lust and greed that absorbs and excretes.'
The Criterion DVD also features interviews with Kobayashi, Nakadai, and director Masahiro Shinoda, along with trailers.
Aka Ningen no jôken.
All quiet on the eastern front.
