‘The Human Condition’ — in 10 Hours
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The human condition, as captured in Masaki Kobayashi’s 10-hour meditation on war and pain, is one of profound and unshakable inequity. In this summer’s most inspired bit of repertory programming, Film Forum has resurrected Kobayashi’s opus — a film that is spectacularly difficult for American audiences to find on VHS or DVD. The venue has programmed two marathon screenings of “The Human Condition” in its entirety on July 27 and August 3; the individual films will be presented between Friday and August 7. The daylong events allow audiences the rare opportunity of getting lost within this polarized world of power and powerlessness.
Released during the course of three years (1959-61), the film, based on the novel by Jumpei Gomikawa, is divided into three installments, slowly nudging the viewer further into a place of cold, detached, existential despair. In the first chapter, “No Greater Love,” our hero is in a position of power. Next, in “Road to Eternity,” he is in a position of obedience. Then in the breathtaking “A Soldier’s Prayer,” he has devolved to a position of abject desperation, at the mercy of a God who seems all but ignorant of his plight. From a factory to the army barracks to the mud and dirt of the open field, the central theme of “The Human Condition” involves man turning against his fellow man, using such devices as employment, rank, and nationality to rationalize the abuse.
Set in Japan during the days of World War II, the film raises issues of honor, shame, and wartime service as Kobayashi pushes back against the Japanese mantra that rose up in the final days of the war: “Death Before Surrender.” As life for poor young Kaji (Tatsuya Nakadai) goes from bleak to unbearable, his systematic rejection of the honor-before-survival mind-set — his raging determination to survive — becomes one of the work’s central themes.
“No Greater Love” provides the trilogy’s most transparent and powerful scenes of moral and ethical discussions. Kaji is able to focus on these debates of conscience because he is in a position of authority. Desperate to avoid the front lines of the war, and to remain close to his wife, Michiko (Michiyo Aratama), Kaji accepts a position as a labor manager at a remote work camp in southern Manchuria, a facility where laborers are beaten relentlessly in the pit as they are pushed toward an unattainable daily quota. Complicating matters is a trainload of Chinese POWs transferred to the camp. These enemy combatants pit Kaji against colleagues who view these men as expendable cogs who can be worked to the point of death. As this disagreement escalates, his co-workers arrange for Kaji to be drafted into the war, ridding themselves of his morals.
In “Road to Eternity,” Kaji is no longer the one issuing the orders, but the one doing as he’s told, a soldier trapped low in the ranks of the army. Overnight, he finds himself in the same position as those he once managed, sent to the front lines much as those Chinese POWs were sent to him, as fodder for the great war machine. It is here that the man of conscience beaten into submission, subjected not only to a brutal hierarchy of officers and infantryman, but also to a sub-hierarchy of veteran and rookie soldiers. His strategy of pacifism quickly morphs into a strategy of appeasement; Kaji realizes he can no longer make things right, but that he might make it out of the war alive.
While heartbreaking in its cynicism and devastating in its relentlessness, the epic is nevertheless filled with astonishing performances from some of the most renowned Japanese actors. So Yamamura (“Tora! Tora! Tora!”) is the wild-eyed executioner at the work camp. Minoru Chiaki (“The Seven Samurai”) is the soldier losing his mind on the battlefield. Fans of Yasujiro Ozu will recognize Chishu Ryu (“Tokyo Story”) as one of the many memorable personalities Kaji meets while wandering the country after the war.
But it is Mr. Nakadai — the focus of a current Film Forum retrospective — who so delicately lays out one of the most inspired, engaging, and essential performances ever captured on film. Tempering his performance within a narrow range of alienation, anxiety, and despair, Mr. Nakadai nudges Kaji through his 10-hour free fall, shifting gears from stoic to strategic, to a final state of desperation. Kaji is a man losing touch with himself, constantly beaten down and reconstituted. In each chapter, there is a scene where his internal trauma erupts to the surface. As he risks his life to save those of his workers, Kaji shames his colleagues into setting aside the sword; as he wanders the ravaged countryside after the war has been lost, he contemplates the merits of suicide. In an unforgettable scene with his wife, on the night before he is to go to the front lines, Kaji finds himself too exhausted to say what he wants to say and too pessimistic to give Michiko much hope. He asks her to stand naked, near the window, so he can always remember her this way — a woman he loves so much, who will always be beyond his grasp.
“A Soldier’s Prayer” is the crown jewel of the trilogy, the most potent and philosophical of Kobayashi’s chapters, witnessing Kaji’s attempts to survive at rock bottom. Trapped behind enemy lines, his fellow soldiers eviscerated, he begins to realize that he will be treated even worse at the hands of his enemies than he was by his fellow countrymen. And once captured, it is he who now finds himself a POW, pleading with his captors for crumbs of bread just as so many others once pleaded with him. Reduced to groveling, Kaji’s overseers show the prisoner no signs of mercy. They cackle at him as they gorge on their food and hoist heavy supply bags onto his aching back.
Groaning and staggering under the weight, Kaji’s body finally gives out, and it is thatwhere the symbolism reaches a tipping point, where Kobayashi presents humanity at its most animalistic. In times of war, the façade of a civilized society falls away, and behind that veneer mankind is divided into two camps: those with the food, and those who hoist the bags.
ssnyder@nysun.com