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The Human Condition I: No Greater Love

1959, War, 3h 20m

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The human condition i: no greater love photos.

Although war has broken out, conscientious objector Kaji (Tatsuya Nakadai) hopes his job as manager for a mining company will keep him from being conscripted. His latest pet project is to improve working conditions for Chinese laborers in a far-flung mine, and, although his employers have their doubts, they agree to it. Once there, Kaji is dejected to find very little support for his ideas, and as POWs are introduced to the workforce, he risks his position by helping them.

Original Language: Japanese

Director: Masaki Kobayashi

Producer: Shigeru Wakatsuki

Writer: Jumpei Gomikawa , Masaki Kobayashi , Zenzô Matsuyama

Release Date (Theaters): Dec 14, 1959 wide

Runtime: 3h 20m

Distributor: Brandon Films Inc., Image Entertainment Inc.

Sound Mix: Mono

Cast & Crew

Tatsuya Nakadai

Michiyo Aratama

Michio Minami

Minoru Chiaki

Susumu Fujita

Yasuke Kawazu

Kokinji Katsura

Ryohei Uchida

Kenjiro Uemura

Kan Yanagidani

Masaki Kobayashi

Jumpei Gomikawa

Zenzô Matsuyama

Shigeru Wakatsuki

Chuji Kinoshita

Original Music

Yoshio Miyajima

Cinematographer

Keiichi Uraoka

Film Editing

Critic Reviews for The Human Condition I: No Greater Love

Audience reviews for the human condition i: no greater love.

Astounding war drama, The Human Condition is a milestone in cinema, a film so ambitious in scope, yet so simple in the way that it tells a captivating story. This being the first part of the trilogy, The Human Condition I: No Greater Love begins to tell the story of Kaji, a Japanese man who tries to survive in Japan during the Second World War. Such a simple idea is presented before you, but the way the subject is tackled is sheer brilliance. The Human Condition is a masterpiece of cinema, and this first part starts off slow, but steadily unfolds to tell an unforgettable story. Once the story picks up, the film moves at a steady pace, and it doesn't feel like a 3 hour + film. The cast do a fine job in their roles and each brings something to the film that elevates it to a masterful quality. The direction by director Masaki Kobayashi is flawless, and the way he handles such a simple, yet poignant subject is simply brilliant. Films like this are a rare breed because they deal with the an important subject, but they manage to grab the viewers attention due to the fact that the characters are richly detailed and you experience the struggle of their ordeal with them. The Human Condition tackles its subject well, and this first part manages to build up something quite memorable, and l like I said, as the story progresses, the tone of the film becomes more dramatic an it does quite well due to its well paced storyline, of which the director is not afraid to take his time in order to tell an unforgettable film. The result is a stellar first part that upon once viewing the entire trilogy was a film going experience like no other. The Human Condition is and unforgettable piece of cinema, and it's also one of the defining classics of cinematic history.

a 10 hour film made in six parts and released as three separate films from 1959-1961, the human condition is as ambitious as the title suggests, and it succeeds on every level. this is one of those rare times that the cliche term "sprawling epic" actually applies as this film takes it place alongside "all quiet on the western front" as the greatest anti-war films in cinematic history. you really see the span of the human condition as kaji, played masterfully by tatsuya nakadai goes from the corporate office, to managing a labor camp, to being a common soldier, to marching across nations, to being a POW in a russian camp at the end of the war. the film never gets dull. seen as somewhat anti-japanese at the time of its release, it is now seen as a massive apology letter from japan to the rest of us of the guilt many of them feel over their involvement with germany in WW2. the film excels in cinematography and locations, the acting was amazing from each of the many performers that show up at different stages in the film, and kobayashi's directing should be seen as one of the greatest directorial successes of all time. so much more could be said, but it just needs to be seen to be understood.

"The Human Condition" starts at the Gate of Hope and Peace in occupied Manchuria during World War II. Kaji(Tatsuya Nakadai) knows his being called up to the armed forces is likely to be a death sentence and does not want Machiko(Michiyo Aratama), who followed him there, to be left a widow. She does not care. She just wants to be with him. By contrast, his pal Kageyama(Keiji Sada) just regrets not having knocked anybody up before being called up. But Kaji gets a reprieve of sorts when a manager likes his report, despite the perceived Communist influences, and assigns him to be the labor supervisor in a remote mine, deferring his enlistment and allowing him to marry Michiko. "The Human Condition" is a powerful, bleak and epic(6 parts, 10 hours - perfect for a long train ride) view of war, that does give into melodrama on rare occasion. What is of central interest is the power wielded by those holding the gun(or in this case, a sword) that is not only used against those who are being occupied but also those seen as being weak in the armed forces of the time, while others seek to profit from such abject misery. At the same time, the movie does not in the least avoid depicting the subject of human slavery. Kaji is not totally naive.(The height of which comes late in the movie.) He is aware of the chances of survival but most of what he knows is from books which cannot prepare him for the inhumanity he will face. Kaji hopes to transfer some of this knowledge to the real world to make it a more humane place, even in war, but against such dangerous odds, all he can do is win small victories, as everybody is waiting for the inevitability of the end of the war.

"Though you have paid a bitter price, you finally caught the humanism train." <CENTER>NINGEN NO JÔKEN (1959)</CENTER> Director: Masaki Kobayashi Country: Japan Genre: Drama / War Length: 208 minutes <CENTER><a href="http://s712.photobucket.com/albums/ww125/ElCochran90/?action=view¤t=NingennoJkenI.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://i712.photobucket.com/albums/ww125/ElCochran90/NingennoJkenI.jpg" border="0" alt="Human Condition,Masaki Kobayashi,Tatsuya Nakadai,Japan"></a></CENTER> Ningen no Jôken, the epic dinosaur drama of Masaki Kobayashi universally known as the famous Human Condition trilogy, is one of the most staggering, haunting, visually captivating and emotionally moving and heartwarmingly ambitious dramas ever made in cinema history. Its power and glory are unprecedented and it established a notoriously influential landmark in patriotic Japanese filmmaking. Whereas Japanese films had a big amount of disciplinary and moral issues with abusive authoritative figures as a political background and were mainly Samurai movies, a branch that mainly predominated during the 50's and 60's, Ningen no Jôken imposed a difference. Telling and narrating three (!) sides of the Second World War through the eyes of a simple, patriotic humanist man of Japan, a film that was originally divided into 6 parts and latterly divided into three, its sheer power, brilliance and haunting beauty is here to stay throughout the generations of humanity. It is here to work as a reminder of the strength of the human soul, the perseverance of the spirit through the numerous hardships of life, no matter how brutal they may seem, and to understand that our life belongs to a "superior being" and not to us, obviously from a Buddhist perspective. It is remarkable how this giant film was one of the first well-known and disseminated cinematic projects of Japanese master Masaki Kobayashi being, at the same time, one of the best films ever committed to celluloid. While several filmmakers usually dream with their last movie being a masterpiece and wish to end up their filmic careers in a memorable way, the meaning and size of Kobayashi's "trilogy" surpasses any of those projects, resulting in arguably the best war film ever made on par with Sergei M. Eisenstein's Bronenosets Potyomkin (1925), Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now (1979), and Obchod na Korze (1965) by Ján Kadár & Elmar Klos, among other meaningful luminaries of the genre. The story has been modernly separated into three parts: "No Greater Love", "The Road to Eternity" and "A Soldier's Prayer", although it is still divided into the original six parts, each of them having a clear and equally devastating ending. The two first parts introduce the character Kaji, a humanist protagonist and an utter patriotic conscientious extraordinarily played by Tatsuya Nakadai. Kaji is offered military exemption under the condition that he fulfills his duty working as a supervisor in a Manchurian POW camp. He witnesses the cruelty of the Japanese authorities towards the extremely mistreated and deteriorated Chinese prisoners, so he decides to stop following orders of his superiors regarding their inhumanly disciplinary methods and contribute to the welfare of the prisoners. This causes him a conflict with them so he is forced to serve in the Japanese army. That is the premise of the following two parts, where he helps a friend to flee with the Russians while he is brutally abused by his superiors, men who see his patriotism and guts and end up putting him up for promotion. He is ultimately sent with a hopelessly armed group of men against the attack of the Russian armored divisions, culminating in disaster and in consequences Kaji seemingly will never be able to forgive to himself. The final two parts of the film focus on the journey of Kaji and the survivors of the last episode to Manchuria constantly sneaking behind enemy lines, being finally captured by the Russian forces and causing Kaji to be ironically in the same position the Chinese prisoners were when they were under his charge. The only thing he deeply yearns for is to return to his wife Kaji, whom he had married before going to the Manchurian camp. The whole trilogy gathered a total of 8 wins. Ningen no Jôken III won five awards at the Mainichi Film Concours in 1962 for Best Cinematography, Best Screenplay, Best Actor, Best Film and Best Director. Michiyo Aratama had also won two awards for her melodramatic performance. Technical perfection is one of the characteristics that may first arise to a human mind when the title of the film is mentioned. The brutality of the Second World War is overshadowed by an elegant and vast cinematography that gorgeously covers, in an effective war-like black-and-white tone, vast scenarios, gigantic landscapes, big congregations of armed men, and the facial expressions of the most relevant protagonists reacting to the unbelievable events that thoroughly take place in such a hostile and catastrophic environment. It mirrors the features of a Greek tragedy from a Japanese perspective. The vision of portraying the horrors of war through the eyes of a man has always carried a very personal and moving connotation, interestingly causing an everlasting impact. Perhaps it was Kobayashi's intentions to transform such a massive world conflict in a war which grandiose proportions are complicated to understand for human minds. Therefore, the amount of violence and cruelty on and off screen is considerably big, making it a challenging watch not suitable for highly sensitive eyes. The music is as epic as the film itself and the camera work is spellbinding. Each part of the trilogy contains one (if not several) scenes which seem so powerful and giant in scale that they are meant to permanently stay in the mind. The Chinese prisoners shouting "Murderer! Murderer!" in the second episode, the war sequence and the ending scene in the fourth episode, and Kaji's desperate search for his wife in the sixth episode are easily among the best scenes ever filmed. The first part offers highly humanistic messages. "You finally have caught the humanism train" is the most important line told to Kaji when the people around him realize the honesty and truthfulness behind his motives. Unfair consequences are the next steps he must walk, but justice prevails after all, either literally or not. A great contrast is offered in the sequel, turning into an action-oriented piece of filmmaking, a chapter where the editing and the sound effects magisterially orchestrate their technical roles in a breathtaking way. However, his saintliness is so high that he does everything in his way to avoid becoming the inhuman superiors that always ordered him to perform questionable actions. When his rank is promoted, he offers the treatment not only that he always wished to receive, but also the one that he knew was the correct one all along. "Renoirish" humanism is still a present factor. The last part gathers some flashbacks of the previous installments as a perfectly justified excuse to question the actions and decisions that Kaji has made and taken throught his process of humanization. Murder is the last action he wishes to perform, yet he is compelled to for the sake of survival... of his survival and the survival of his fellow, national companions. He is haunted by the possibility of his wife Michiko rejecting him because of that. Analyzing the female character of Michiko, she is the model woman that gathers every single benign standard, morally and emotionally speaking. Her love for Kaji is as great and epic as the premise of the movie itself. She suddenly seems to symbolize the great love Japan has for its citizens and the love that world has towards the concept of peace. She instantly becomes the wife any living human being would exaggeratedly wish to have. No matter where Kaji is, she will always be with him, either physically or symbolically: in his memories and in his heart, whispering to the ears of his soul the constant motivational phrases she confessed him throughout their relationship. The amount of inspiration and strength she provides to Kaji despite the numerous goodbyes both had to say to each other is stinking. It may even cause and reveal a cathartic resemblance either to a single viewer of a whole nation. The performance of Tatsuya Nakadai is one to be remembered for ages to come. Before incarnating ruthless, cold-blooded and powerful samurais mainly in upcoming Masaki Kobayashi films, his presence irradiated a high dose of humanism from beginning to end. Thanks to the degree Nakadai gave life to Kaji, the film clearly states, through the direction of Kobayashi, that the worst enemy against a soldier is war itself and not the opposite side. The Soviet Union shows less cruelty and more scruples than the Japanese themselves. All of the soldiers and prisoners share the same hope and eagerly long for the same event to happen: that peace reigns once again, that the war is finally over, that the Germans surrender once and for all. The several characters he meets offer him a slice of sentiments and, although their appearance in upcoming chapters of the story is not really necessary, they slowly build a transforming soldier. From humanist to fighter, he is one of the most complete characters that could ever be seen in a film, not mainly because of the length of the story, but because of his novelistic transformation, like resembling the daily reflection a person should perform as a healthy habit. Masaki Kobayashi is the visionary mastermind behind this masterpiece and it is arguably the best Japanese film ever made, along with other giants of the country like Akira Kurosawa (Rashômon [1950], Ikiru [1952]), Kenji Mizoguchi (Ugetsu Monogatari [1953], Sanshô Dayu [1954]) and Yasujiro Ozu (Tôkyô Monogatari [1953], Ukigusa [1959]). It perfectly works as an anti-war statement and as a shattering drama based on war times. While there are several films being made nowadays that practically have nothing new to say about the horrors of WWII and the Holocaust, this fully-developed essay steps over so-called masterpieces and has all the right to be considered as a massive towering achievement in the history of Japanese cinema. Easily among the best 100 films ever made, Ningen no Jôken, whether it is considered as a 6-chapter miniseries, as an epic movie trilogy or as a giant mammoth drama that surpasses the nine-and-a-half-hour length, it is an anti-war experience and a study on fortitude that is meant to be remembered eternally by the human race. 100/100

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Criterion Review: THE HUMAN CONDITION

Masaki kobayashi’s wartime odyssey is worth every minute of the 9.5-hour journey.

Masaki Kobayashi is separated from contemporaries like Akira Kurosawa, Kenji Mizoguchi, and Yasujiro Ozu through two personal and paradoxical elements. First, there’s Kobayashi’s outspoken cynicism towards the regimented fealty of Japanese society and culture; the second, the hope that the individuals within such an oppressive system can collectively push for social change and the ultimate public good. This duality between the individual and the toxic whole — and the psychological anguish inherent in undertaking such challenges — is imbued through much of Kobayashi’s work, from early films at Shochiku through the sharp-tongued samurai spectacle Harakiri , to even the spooky technicolor feast Kwaidan . I’d long heard that the Human Condition trilogy proved the best exploration of Kobayashi’s themes–but its gargantuan nearly ten-hour length was intimidating, to say the least. And even if Harakiri and Kwaidan were immediate favorites of mine after a first viewing, it was daunting to imagine such overwhelming and impactful experiences drawn out to such a grueling length. Even in summary, The Human Condition is epic in scope and exacting in tragic detail. Long available on DVD by Criterion in the States, the film finally received a Blu-ray upgrade this month–and it was time to make the journey through what some have called the best Japanese film trilogy of all time.

Originally filmed and released in three installments of two parts each, the nine-and-a-half-hour The Human Condition , adapted from Junpei Gomikawa’s six-volume novel, tells of the journey of the well-intentioned yet naive Kaji–played by the Japanese superstar Tatsuya Nakadai–from labor camp supervisor to Imperial Army Soldier to Soviet prisoner of war. Constantly trying to rise above a corrupt system, Kaji time and again finds his morals to be an impediment rather than an advantage. A raw indictment of Japan’s wartime mentality as well as a personal existential tragedy, Kobayashi’s riveting, gorgeously filmed epic is novelistic cinema at its best.

THE HUMAN CONDITION I: NO GREATER LOVE (Parts 1 & 2)

This first installment sees Kaji first enter the moral minefield of World War II by way of supervising a Manchurian mining labor camp in order to earn a coveted exemption from military service. Having raised his fair share of eyebrows at his previous job with his “socialist-oriented” theories of fair working conditions for laborers of all types, Kaji immediately clashes with the corrupt officials and bitter Chinese prisoners who want nothing more than to see him gone. Kaji’s also trapped in a zero-sum power dynamic burdened upon him–the Chinese see his colonizing presence as nothing more than devilry, full of empty promises of change, while his fellow Japanese see him as an equal threat to the Chinese, potentially stoking unrest among the prisoners by simply giving a damn about protocol and basic human decency.

While Harakiri methodically unfurled its biting criticism of bushido over the course of its runtime, I was blindsided at how immediately critical The Human Condition was about the brutal atrocities committed by the Japanese during World War II. Anchored by a riveting performance by later Kobayashi regular Tatsuya Nakadai, Kaji’s fight to hold true to his principles is assaulted on all sides every minute of this 3-and-a-half-hour first installment. It’s a death by a thousand cuts as Kaji seems to make progress to win the hearts of the prisoners, only for officials around him to scheme behind his back–often costing lives as much as goodwill.

Kaji’s isolation is vividly externalized by the barren wastelands of the camp, which makes the possibility of holding true to anything–principles, relationships, power–seem just as as remote and infinitesimal. With its sandy, windswept dunes that tower like black voids, the quarries also stirringly evoke the rapidly-shifting power dynamics of the film–frequently blurring Kaji’s ideal role as a representative for prisoners and an inevitable push towards his role as their captor and executioner-by-proxy.

To his oppressors’ gain, Kaji is slowly drained of his drive to better conditions as higher-ups replace the workforce with Prisoners of War from the Chinese front. Emaciated and near-blind from their journey, they’re so far removed from their humanity at first glance that their first appearance is accompanied by a horror-film stinger. Here, Kaji’s struggle shifts–as his fellow guards and officials find themselves freed from the bare-minimum of treating prisoners humanely under the ethos of patriotic punishment of their enemies. What’s so striking about this first installment of The Human Condition is while a major focus is on how Kaji’s noble goals are left to wither in the face of systemic oppression, Kobayashi is just as attuned to how sickeningly gradual the process of depersonalization can be. It’s not just a film about the relationship between prisoners and the imprisoned — but how one group of people can quickly regard another as inhuman before catching on to their own bizarre behavior.

As a counterpoint, Kobayashi seizes whatever glimpses of hope he can from the darkness of oppression and malice. There are occasional successful escape attempts, which Kaji chooses not to report; brief romances marred by tragedy between prisoners and the comfort women forced to join them; and above all, the love between Kaji and his wife Michiko (Michiyo Aratama). While Kaji tries to shield her from the realities of the labor camp, it’s clear that the toll of his secrecy isn’t just taken on Kaji’s sanity, but his increasingly tenuous relationship with Michiko–and it’s through her earnestness to keep him on the path of a truly honorable man that Kaji finds the resolve to further grind against the powers that be. In the most moving scene of the film, Kaji’s efforts aren’t wholly in vain as the imprisoned Chinese, led by Wang Heng Li (Seiji Miyaguchi), rebel against further executions after a failed escape attempt. It’s as cathartic scene as ever there was one in Kobayashi’s filmography–and one whose effects ripple with cynical consequence throughout the rest of the trilogy.

THE HUMAN CONDITION II: ROAD TO ETERNITY (Parts 3 & 4)

In stark reaction to the brazen courage at the fiery heart of the trilogy’s first chapters, Kaji is thrust headlong into the military system he fought against and tried desperately to avoid. Stuck with menial, humiliating duties alongside similarly-punished men forcibly conscripted into the Kwantung Army, Kaji witnesses firsthand how petty individual self-interests and a blind devotion to the absurdities of military rank and protocol can devolve the best of men into the worst of beasts.

Amidst bitter barracks rivalries that are quickly covered up to present the illusion of unity, Kaji is forced to undergo trials that systematically push his honest, anti-corruption efforts to their limits. In one shocking instance, the ritualized hazing of one soldier culminates in his borderline-accidental suicide — and faced with even more brutal punishments if he doesn’t comply, Kaji is forced to deliver the soldier’s widow the company-approved line that the soldier’s home life is what drove her husband to kill himself. As it would later be explored in Harakiri , Kobayashi rigorously takes to task the blusteringly unwavering devotion Japan had to its military and its accompanying power structure. It’s a power landscape where the only rule is unquestioning devotion and loyalty–which naturally fosters an environment festering with abuses of power and conspiracies of silence. More than once, Kaji faces attempted bribes for promotions to look the other way, or is beaten into submission–because that’s what those in power believe incentivizes or strikes fear into the men in their ranks.

In most cases, they’re right–several other instances show how these men either exploit their rank to get what they want or exploit the most trivial (to them) situations to seize whatever glory they can get. One sequence sees two soldiers go after a flare that may or may not have been fired by mistake–they stumble upon a family of farmers who have nothing to do with the situation, but in the interest of time and potential glory, one soldier decides he’ll frame a farmer for the flare incident. These petty squabbles of power have true life-or-death consequences for the Chinese whose land they’re occupying–and throughout the trilogy as a whole, Kobayashi pulls no punches at frankly illustrating the perversions of power the Japanese committed at the expense of the Chinese.

These first two films broach the topic of Japanese occupation in a graphic way I would never have expected from a film of this period–one that illustrates the whole of the Japanese military campaign as a fruitless, vain exercise in ego-boosting, fueled by baseless nationalistic pride and toxic masculinity. While The Human Condition faced initial rejection by Shochiku due to its controversial antiwar themes–particularly in the midst of 1950s Japan–Kobayashi and source material author Gomikawa had little reason to pay their hesitations any heed in developing the film adaptation. For both men, The Human Condition was a largely autobiographical endeavor, with both Gomikawa and Kobayashi drawing on their war experiences on the front to portray these sentiments and events as accurately as possible. Much like Elem Klimov’s later Come and See , these artists recognize from personal experience the immense responsibility inherent in depicting war–and throughout The Human Condition , there is no valor to be found in battle or murder–just an apolitical drive to stay alive, with all other nationalistic ideals as flimsy window dressing tacked on to baser, more insidious goals.

It’s all too fitting that this second installment features the only combat seen in the trilogy–here, Kobayashi features the Soviet assault on Japanese forces, fittingly depicted as a blood-curdling moment of surrender and defeat. Where other more “patriotic” films would depict this as a sequence to later be avenged, Kobayashi instead dramatizes this as a moment of reckoning put off for far too long–as three hours of built-up infighting and blind patriotism come crashing down in the face of reality. As the forces that be finally meet their end with Kaji still trapped within them, Kaji’s goal shifts to the most basic of all–while he strives to be a good human being, he now prioritizes staying alive at all costs.

THE HUMAN CONDITION III: A SOLDIER’S PRAYER (Parts 5 & 6)

With the destruction of a unified front against the Soviets, the Kwantung army is decimated into small bands of factions spread throughout Manchuria. After he’s forced to kill, breaking one of his last personal credos, Kaji swears off any continued Army service and heads for his former hometown–and hopefully Michiko, his wife. The most episodic and at times surreal episode of the trilogy, Part 5 of The Human Condition feels at times like a lost chapter of Dante’s Divine Comedy. Lost in an endless dark forest, Kaji and the dwindling group of survivors he carries in tow are left to fend for themselves against the elements. Plenty of them debate about who’s to blame for the loss of the war, but for the most part, these fruitless hypotheticals are cast into a growing void–in the face of defeat, there’s no more order or rank to cling to and therefore no more sense of purpose. It’s as if Kaji, by sticking to his sense of individualism and belief in the public good, is the only one to emerge on the other side of his years of ideological strife with his reason for being mostly intact.

Kaji, however, now finds himself contending with a more dangerous enemy–his fellow soldiers who refuse to admit their own defeat or have decided to pursue their own interests more lawlessly than ever. From partisan, ideologically fluid soldiers hoping for a victory for Chiang Kai-She to disparate pairs of families, Kobayashi barrels Kaji from a removed sense of responsibility for his fellow man into direct life-or-death situations with cruel, split-second decisions. The conflicts devolve from the intangible to the all-too-primal, with an unnerving sense of fluidity. Those who join Kaji’s tribe may disappear from it within hours, their fates unknown. Kaji naturally feels responsible for their condition–but as those around him increasingly surrender to their natural states, he’s forced to choose between his senses of compassion and self-preservation.

It’s in these last few sequences that The Human Condition places Kaji in the most ironic position of all–as a Prisoner of War in a Soviet labor camp, a full 180 from the opening moments of the Trilogy. The Soviet-occupied territory has been set up by Kobayashi as a sort of tentative paradise–one where everyone does the labor they’re capable of, and where everyone strives for the collective good of the people. Kaji’s dream quickly chills in the face of reality–as his own fate is filtered through the short-term self-interests of those who are entrusted with his care. The final chapter is a fittingly Kafkaesque descent into bureaucratic madness, as fears of unrest among the prisoners quickly see Kaji turned into a scapegoat, his cries for decency and compassion lost in translation by an interpreting prisoner who sees every moment as a chance to curry more favor with his stoic employers.

Kobayashi’s unflinching lack of sentimentality towards Kaji’s closing plight may easily frustrate those who have invested nine-and-a-half hours into such an equally relentlessly hopeful protagonist. What is the point of suffering, if not deliverance from such a world of unending cruelty? But Kaji’s suffering isn’t meant to alienate its rapt audience, even as he detaches further from a reality that increasingly rejects him. While The Human Condition may depict senseless depravity the closer it approaches its final set of end credits, Kobayashi’s cruelty isn’t the point. Even to its last closing frames, Kobayashi celebrates Kaji’s unerring sense of righteousness and hope–that even driven to the point of madness, stripped away from a sense of order and duty warped by those in power, the fundamental function of a human being is to care for others, and that someday humanity could someday be united in that single, primordial purpose to better each other’s lives.

What prevents us from doing so, however, are the worse angels of our nature–the ones that create borders between lands and classes of people, an individualism that requires surrender to nationalism. It’s easy to hope–but it’s easier to give in. But the ultimate prayer of The Human Condition is that even in the face of cruelty, we will never lose that inner sense of self–the one that keeps a light fueled in the darkness. And if that light goes out–that the world was briefly a better place despite our bitter ends because we kept it going.

VIDEO/AUDIO

Criterion presents The Human Condition in a 1080p 2.39:1 HD transfer, sourced from a digital restoration by Shochiku from each film’s original 35mm negative. The restoration is accompanied by restored monaural Japanese/Chinese tracks for No Greater Love and Road to Eternity , as well as 4.0 surround tracks in Japanese, Chinese, and Russian for A Soldier’s Prayer.

Despite using the same original restored source as their 2009 DVD release, Criterion’s Blu-ray of The Human Condition is able to utilize the newer format’s capacity for greater visual clarity to awe-inspiring and frequently sobering ends. Kobayashi’s layered, rich cinematography is preserved in great detail–with strong contrast between blacks, whites, and greys. There are moments of print damage, notably in the forest segments of part 5, but many of these damage artifacts are inherent to the original negative and the harsh conditions of shooting on location in Hokkaido. The audio tracks are frequently immersive, even in the earlier films’ monaural tracks–dialogue is prized, while foley work of gunfire, weather, and the roar of tanks in part two are fittingly overwhelming yet never smothering other aural elements.

SPECIAL FEATURES

Masaki Kobayashi (Disc 1): An excerpt from a 1993 Directors Guild of Japan interview between Kobayashi and fellow filmmaker Masahiro Shinoda, discussing the multi-year production and release of the film.
Masahiro Shinoda (Disc 2): Kobayashi’s contemporary discusses the lasting legacy of The Human Condition on Japanese cinema and the films’ critical lens of the World War II experience as it relates to the country’s post-war culture.
Tatsuya Nakadai (Disc 3): The star of The Human Condition discusses his experiences making the film, his relationship with Kobayashi over the decades, as well as the trilogy’s overall impact on his career as one of his first starring roles.
Trailers for The Human Condition ’s original individual releases.

The Human Condition is now available on Blu-ray courtesy of The Criterion Collection.

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Classic Movies

‘The Human Condition’ (1959–61) Movie Review: Classic Kobayashi Trilogy

Tatsuya Nakadai, Michiyo Aratama 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.

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.

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.

The Human Condition Trilogy: No Greater Love (1959), The Road to Eternity (1959), A Soldier’s Prayer (1961). Director: Masaki Kobayashi. Screenplay: Zenzo Matsuyama and Masaki Kobayashi; from Jumpei Gomikawa’s novel. Cast: Tatsuya Nakadai, Michiyo Aratama.

Photos: Courtesy of the Criterion Collection

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The Human Condition

DVD edition reviewed by Chris Galloway
September 03 2009

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Masaki Kobayashi’s mammoth humanist drama is one of the most staggering achievements of Japanese cinema. Originally filmed and released in three parts, the nine-and-a-half-hour The Human Condition ( Ningen no joken ), adapted from Junpei Gomikawa’s six-volume novel, tells of the journey of the well-intentioned yet naive Kaji (handsome Japanese superstar Tatsuya Nakadai) from labor camp supervisor to Imperial Army soldier to Soviet POW. Constantly trying to rise above a corrupt system, Kaji time and again finds his morals an impediment rather than an advantage. A raw indictment of its nation’s wartime mentality as well as a personal existential tragedy, Kobayashi’s riveting, gorgeously filmed epic is novelistic cinema at its best.

Picture 7/10

Extras 6/10

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The Human Condition

Studio: the criterion collection.

Easily one of the greatest film trilogies of all time, Masaki Kobayashi’s The Human Condition is a sweeping nine-and-a-half-hour epic about the horrors of war. Each of the three films is divided into two parts. Together, they tell the story of Kaji (Tatsuya Nakadai), a pacifist and socialist forced to serve in the Japanese army throughout World War II. Right from the opening scene, where Kaji complains to his partner and soon-to-be wife Michiko (Michiyo Aratama) about his fears that serving in the war will destroy their relationship, Kaji’s distaste for the Army and his thoughts on the War are perfectly clear. Setting this tone early on in the film only amplifies everything that happens next.

The first film in the trilogy, No Greater Love , showcases the beginning of Kaji’s role in the Japanese war effort. In order to get out of direct combat, Kaji agrees to move with Michiko to a prisoner of war camp, where he is tasked with overseeing the Chinese prisoners forced to work in the mines. Instantly, Kaji’s emphasis on treating the prisoners in humane ways – avoiding violent punishments, forming close relationships with them, and allowing them more freedoms – ticks off the other Japanese Army officials. This film introduces some of the ethical questions that are constantly explored throughout all three films and emphasizes Kaji’s constant struggle to be a good person when he is surrounded by people, and a war, that is anything but. The film also shows how incredible Nakadai’s performance in all three films actually is. Watching how he portrays Kaji here, when the character hasn’t been touched directly by the war yet, shows just how broad of an acting range he is actually able to achieve throughout the trilogy.

The second film , Road To Eternity , feels like two different films in one. The film’s first part, following Kaji as a recruit in the army, feels like a natural continuation of the previous film. Kaji’s good morals arise mainly in his fight to protect a recruit named Obara (Kunie Tanaka) from the cruel and unfair treatment of the upper soldiers. The second part of the film is where the pacing of the entire trilogy completely changes. Kaji is put in charge of soldiers of his own, and because of his young age and his refusal to punish his troops with violence, he is often taunted and physically beaten by the other veterans. The film’s last act is the first and only time that actual front-line combat is shown in the trilogy, as Kaji and his troops are forced to defend their position from Russian troops. Through all of these moments, the film constantly questions what is acceptable because of wartime and what is the right thing to do. Road to Eternity also emphasizes how one’s identity is changed as a result of war. As viewers watch Kaji having to defend himself from enemy forces, one of the main themes of the entire trilogy quickly unwraps itself: in the end, nothing matters but survival.

The final film in the series, A Soldier’s Prayer , continues to explore this idea in particular. Almost playing like an adaptation of Homer’s Odyssey , the film centers around Kaji’s journey trying to make it back to his home and to his wife. Traveling with a group of soldiers, he makes his way through the now-decimated countryside while attempting to avoid Soviet forces and stay true to his morals and beliefs, even when he has nothing left to lose. A Soldier’s Prayer is perhaps the most gruesome of the three films, particularly because of its deeply harrowing visuals and events. The film does a commendable job of communicating how the effects of war long outlive the battle itself, evident within the thread of hopelessness running throughout the film – the destroyed land, the lack of food and the unlivable conditions. Kaji’s continued hope throughout all of his trials and tribulations shines like a bright light, highlighting the perseverance of the human race that the entire film trilogy constantly emphasizes.

Each film in The Human Condition is unforgettable, but the film is just as powerful, if not more powerful, when examined as a single product. Even though Kobayashi never actually gets into any of Kaji’s past before the war began, the trilogy is a complete picture of a man’s life. It shows, in a variety of ways, how war destroys livelihoods, families and communities. One of the most harrowing parts of watching the trilogy, perhaps the most harrowing part, is actually knowing that Kaji’s story is merely a mimic of the stories of countless others, in all kinds of different wars and struggles. The Human Condition also highlights and reiterates aspects of the human experience – such as the sacrifices one makes for love, for others, and for what they think is right – that are constantly surrounding us in everyday life.

The Criterion Collection’s new digital restoration of the film looks incredibly clear, showcasing all of Kobayashi’s beautiful, haunting visuals in a truly striking way. The physical edition of the film doesn’t come with a lot of supplements, but the two most notable featurettes are interviews, one with Kobayashi in 1993 and one with Nakadai in 2009.

( www.criterion.com/films/2106-the-human-condition )

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Kobayashi’s ‘The Human Condition’ Remains Bleak Unrelenting and Unforgettable

Masaki Kobayashi’s nine-hour epic, The Human Condition , is a Sisyphean journey through WWII-era Japan.

It’s entirely fitting that throughout The Human Condition , Masaki Kobayashi’s epic three-part adaptation of an equally expansive novel by Junpei Gomikawa that was recently released on Blu-ray through the Criterion Collection, the filmmaker returns to the image of groups of people slowly slogging their way up a hill or mountain. The Sisyphean implications are clear: life is a constant ascent that never allows any climber to reach a peak or plateau.

It’s a thoroughly bleak sentiment but one that serves as a powerful allegory for a country that, even in 1959 when the first installment of the trilogy was released, was still slowly crawling out of the rubble and chaos of World War II. Or, at least, had yet to fully emerge from the shadows of that conflict.

The gloom of that period shades this multi-tiered story of Kaji (Tatsuya Nakadai). In the first film, subtitled No Greater Love, he manages to escape his conscription by agreeing to take over labor-management at a mining operation in Manchuria. Kaji’s intentions are both selfless and selfish. He doesn’t want to go to the frontlines but he is also hoping to improve working conditions for the Chinese laborers and POWs at the mine.

Inexorably, Kaji is drawn into conflict. He battles with the old guard managers of the mine desperate to turn a profit, and the military police that want to continue to crush the spirit and bodies of the prisoners. Kaji’s unwillingness to bend to their will eventually lands him in the thick of the final months of WWII. The final two films in Kobayashi’s trilogy—1959’s Road to Eternity and 1961’s A Soldier’s Prayer —follow him through basic training, the battlefield, and beyond.

In a supplemental interview on this Criterion release, fellow filmmaker Masahiro Shinoda ( Double Suicide , Pale Flower ) reminds viewers that, at the time, few other directors in Japan were making films on the scale of The Human Condition . Those that did usually involved radioactive lizards crushing cities. The tendency for most directors in the country was to focus on small stories and intimate relationships.

The Human Condition may have one central character to home in on and tender moments in the scenes between Kaji and his doting wife Michiko (Michiyo Aratama), but the scope of the story goes well beyond. Kobayashi and co-screenwriters Zenzo Matsuyama and Koichi Inagaki call into question capitalism, industrialism, the immorality of war, and a lack of empathy spreading among the men in their home country.

Throughout, small moments of mercy arise: an almost quaint love affair between one of the POWs at the mine and a comfort girl paid to service these men; a conjugal visit for Kaji and Michiko during boot camp; group of soldiers feasting upon a pig at an abandoned farm. They are the brief seconds of relief before the stone tumbles back down the hill.

The films are punctuated by some stunning sequences. In No Greater Love , a group of Chinese POWs, starving and wild-eyed after a long train ride, attack the wagon carrying food for them. With the quick edits and unsettling performances by the extras, the scene quickly becomes as terrifying as a zombie attack. Toward the end of Road to Eternity , Kaji is thrown into the thick of the war as his squad faces down a tank corps. It’s one of the most thrilling battles committed to film, in no small part due to the removal of any good guy/bad guy dynamics and a fuller understanding of what is at stake for these young men.

It’s in the final act of this engrossing, breathtaking journey that Kobayashi makes his deepest impact. Kaji is alone and desperately trying to find some way back to his wife. The camera closes in on Nakadai’s face and his wide eyes as he scrabbles for food and shelter and, most of all, some shred of humanity.

We can’t look away nor avoid his growing mania and his complete loss of self-control and dignity. We are all of us standing alongside Kaji, eternally muscling that boulder ever upward.

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The Human Condition I: No Greater Love (I) (1959)

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Blu-ray Review: Criterion Re-explores THE HUMAN CONDITION

Masaki Kobayashi's epic of inhumanity in and around World War II gets a Blu-ray upgrade.

What’s to be said about The Human Condition ? In the case of the epic-length Japanese film of that title made, plenty.

Directed by Masaki Kobayashi ( Harikiri ) and released in three distinct parts between 1959 to 1961, the whole 579 minutes of The Human Condition is nothing less than an immaculate endurance test of sensibility. It is a beautifully made and sometimes brilliantly compelling endurance test, but an endurance test all the same.

Around the hour-and-twenty-minute mark, I realized that in terms of ordinary running times, I was only the equivalent of fifteen minutes in. I was then warned by a fellow Criterion buff to pace myself — as great of an undertaking as the production is, there’s not a single moment of levity in the whole ten hours. He wasn’t kidding. By the time I reached the three-and-a-half-hour mark and completed Part One, I was asking myself if I was really going to be able to get through this. This much expertly-rendered real-life brutality is a rough go.

It’s not that The Human Condition is in any way a poor film. Quite the opposite, really. It’s simply a very, very heavy film. And justifiably so… Mankind’s inhumanity towards man is never an airy topic, particularly when it’s explored within the framework of World War II-era Chinese labor camps, military mistreatment, and combat fatigue. In such, The Human Condition is also a landmark or World Cinema. Some claim it to be a masterpiece.

Based on the sprawling 1958 novel by Junpei Gomikawa, the typically staid venerable studio Shochiku (best known as home of Ozu’s family-centric dramas) went all in for Kobayashi’s massive vision and desire to maintain as much of the author’s content as possible. At nine hours and thirty-nine minutes, I should say he appears to have succeeded. Never showy but always meticulous in its wartime detail of cramped barracks and mundane settings, The Human Condition is, perhaps deceptively, one of the most expensive Japanese productions of its time.

Every new development brings harrowing physical and psychological abuse. Quite often it’s meted out onto characters we’ve become attached to. Sometimes though, it’s those characters committing the atrocities. The point is clear: war brings out the worst in everyone.

For The Human Condition , Kobayashi teams up with acclaimed visionary cinematographer and dyed-in- the-wool communist Yoshio Miyajima. It must be said that this pairing not only results in some incredibly breathtaking and appropriately harrowing imagery, but their shared ideological wavelength meshes to bring out an assured humanism throughout. Kobayashi and Miyajima would most notably reteam for 1962’s Harakiri and 1964’s Kwaidan .

Also vital in the essential humanism of this saga is leading man Tatsuya Nakadai as Kaji. There is scarcely a scene without Nakadai- good thing the camera absolutely loves him. In his fully committed portrayal of Kaji, the actor is completely resolute. Committed, staunch, but never insensitive, Nakadai’s Kaji is a leading man performance for the ages. Nakadai, in Kaji’s moments both honorable and despicable, is never not compelling.

Kaji begins the story as a capable young man enthusiastic about his opportunity to sidestep Japan’s mandatory military service just as the Second World War is ramping up. In accepting a job as a labor representative for Japan’s imprisoned Chinese workforce, he’s ensuring a future for himself with his devoted wife, Michiko (Michiyo Aratama).

The brutal conditions he finds at the isolated work camp, however, prove to be beyond inhumane. As the suffering Chinese prisoners are regularly beaten and pushed to levels of near death, Kaji sooner than not finds his learned patriotism for Imperial Japan at odds with his brewing sense of humanistic outrage. His compassion on behalf of the Chinese only causes tensions to escalate within the camp, resulting in executions with a samurai sword. (Through the whole of The Human Condition , Kobayashi makes repeated points of critically considering and subtly examining Japan’s myth of the noble Samurai). It is Kaji’s inner torment giving way to intensified atrocities that drive the first of the three separate films, No Greater Love .

The second film (each is subsequently broken into two parts), The Road to Eternity , finds Kaji betrayed by the system and forced to serve in the military after all. It is with full confidence that Kobayashi continues his unflinching critique Japan’s past atrocious practices and their abysmal effect on the common people. In this middle entry, Kaji must endure basic training, an arduous and soul-crushing ordeal for all recruits. His reputation as a “red” sympathizer follows him from the labor camp, but so does a certain clout, ensuring him a higher rank and authority once he moves into regular service. In this arduous process Kaji is privy to a situation wherein a weaker private is exploited and ground down by an abusive superior, not at all unlike Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket . Clearly, that film was inspired by this one.

Film three, A Soldier's Prayer , opens in the aftermath of a costly and viscous battle. Kaji, at this point the leader of a mostly annihilated platoon, has officially found himself exactly where he was trying to avoid when he took the doomed labor representative job at the beginning of No Greater Love . Abandoned and alone, Kaji denounces the war, the army, all of it. He’s heading home. Word is that the war is probably ending, anyhow.

The journey at follows, however, is no less a horrendous experience than what’s come before. Kaji, hyper-focused on reuniting with his beloved Michiko, finds himself an unlikely Ulysses on a grueling odyssey wrought with death and exhaustion before eventual capture and torture by the Soviet army. Here, Kaji not only finds himself on the opposite side of the situation in which he began The Human Condition , but he is also confronted with the reality that even communism (supposedly so different from the ideology he’s been raised on) is not without gross oppression.

Yet, as famously long as the whole of The Human Condition is, it is never slow or methodical. Every single scene is brisk and tightly cut, leaving no trace of narrative fat or what some may consider pretentious lingering. The Human Condition , in its unending litany of one damned thing after another, never stops moving forward to its inevitable conclusion.

In terms of cover art and bonus features, Criterion’s Blu-ray release of The Human Condition is basically an as-is port of the company’s previous 2009 DVD release. The whole film and the bonus features are spread across three discs, each tidily containing one of the three individual releases. The packaging is now a thinner clamshell rather than a cardboard box set. The handful of bonus features from back then (two 2009 exclusive interviews and a 1993 TV interview segment with Kobayashi) are represented here, making the jump to high definition alongside the movie proper. Kobayashi and Miyajima’s straightforward but haunting black and white widescreen compositions take on a particularly resonant strength and clarity in 1080p. As in the original presentation, all non-Japanese dialogue is burned into right side of the frame in Japanese. The Blu-ray defaults to English subtitles.

Here are the official bulletpoints as far as the Blu-ray’s details:

• On the Blu-ray: High-definition digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural (Parts 1–4) and 4.0 surround DTS-HD Master Audio (Parts 5 and 6) soundtracks

• Excerpt from a 1993 Directors Guild of Japan interview with director Masaki Kobayashi, conducted by filmmaker Masahiro Shinoda

• Interview from 2009 with actor Tatsuya Nakadai

• Appreciation of Kobayashi and The Human Condition from 2009 featuring Shinoda

• Trailers

• PLUS: An essay by critic Philip Kemp

The Human Condition should be of particular interest to students of Japanese history, World War II buffs, and fans of mid-twentieth century Japanese cinema. Criterion’s initial release of Kobayashi’s epic of unrelenting miserabilism turned plenty of heads in 2009. This Blu-ray upgrade is less likely to do so, if only for the fact that it offers nothing new outside of its 1080p upgrade. That presentation, however, is a significant factor in its own right. Just as Kobayashi’s complete film does not let up, nor does the exquisite presentation of Criterion’s Blu-ray edition.

The Human Condition III: A Soldier's Prayer

Director(s).

Masaki Kobayashi
Zenzô Matsuyama (screenplay)
Kôichi Inagaki (screenplay)
Masaki Kobayashi (screenplay)
Jumpei Gomikawa (novel)
Tatsuya Nakadai
Michiyo Aratama
Tamao Nakamura
Yûsuke Kawazu

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Kaji begins as a labor supervisor for an ore mining company in Southern Manchuria, which gains him an exemption from the military service and allows him to marry the woman he loves, Michiko (Michiyo Aratama), but his idealism immediately begins to get him in trouble with the leadership as he tries to institute more humanitarian policies toward the labor force which consists of Korean and Chinese laborers. This only gets him into further problems with the Japanese military forces the company to use Chinese POWs and he becomes labeled as a communist sympathizer, eventually called up to the military, where his beliefs get him into trouble again during basic training with the veteran soldiers and finally at the front during the Soviet invasion of Manchuria and the uprising of the Chinese peasants, until finally becoming a Soviet prisoner of war.

Kobayashi’s film is one of the first Japanese films to present the Japanese society with a story that placed Japan and its people in the context of the broader world, while discussing important themes of idealism, democracy, communism, humanism, socialism, and at what point one loses sight of one’s morals.

The Human Condition is a beautifully filmed and powerfully acted epic in the purest sense. From the widescreen, desolate landscape of the labor camp to the dark and foreboding scenery of the forests, Kobayshi fills this film with a wonderful visual palette that is almost noirish in its approach but naturist in its subject. And the acting and story are so compelling that the over nine hours that this film runs go by in a breeze. This is filmmaking at its finest.

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The Human Condition was restored by Shochiku Co., Ltd. At IMAGICA Lab in Tokyo from 35mm prints made from the 35mm original camera negative. I’m not sure why this secondary method was used rather than restoring from the original camera negatives to a DI, but the image does look a bit like it has been degraded slightly. There is a little more graininess than one would like, a little more murkiness in the shadows, and the whites can bleach ever so slightly. With that said, these are minor complaints in what is overall a very satisfying black and white image that ultimately looks very good and free from source damage, noise, or DNR.

The monaural soundtracks for The Human Condition Parts 1-4 from a 35mm optical soundtrack print and provided on this Blu-ray release in LPCM 1.0. The 4.0 surround soundtracks for Parts 5 and 6 were remastered from the original 4-tracck stems using Avid’s Pro Tools and iZotope RX and provided on this release in DTS-HD Master Audio 4.0.

The 1.0 mixes for Parts 1-4 sound good, clean, and do not hinder entrance into the drama in any way. While it does seem a bit jarring at first to go from this mono mix to a 4.0 surround if you are watching these in a binge session, the 4.0 mix is also very good and definitely opens things up nicely with wide stereo effects, good atmospherics, and also maintains the clarity of the dialogue and foley effects.

The Supplements

The interviews included are interesting, but all archival. The collection of bonus materials are surprisingly anemic for this Criterion release considering the length of the film.

Masaki Kobayashi (1080i; 00:13:44) – In this 1993 conversation, filmed for the Directors Guild of Japan at Tokyo’s Haiyuza Theatre, director Masaki Kobayashi talks to his fellow filmmaker and longtime admirer Masahiro Shinoda about The Human Condition .
Trailer (1080i)
Masahiro Shinoda (1080i; 0024:41) — Made by the Criterion Collection in 2009, this program features filmmaker Masahiro Shinoda’s observations on The Human Condition and director Masaki Kobayashi.
Tatsuya Nakadai (1080i; 00:17:42) – In this 2009 interview by the Criterion Collection, actor Tatsuya Nakadai discusses his landmark role as Kaji in The Human Condition .
Essay by critic Philip Kemp

The Final Assessment

Set aside a free weekend and watch this classic, you will not regret it and it will stay with you long after the final credits. Highly Recommended.

The Human Condition is out on Blu-ray June 8, 2021 from the Criterion Collection.

Rating Certificate: Not Rated
Studios & Distributors: Ninjin Club | Shochiku | The Criterion Collection
Director: Masaki Kobayashi
Written By: Zenzô Matsuyama (screenplay) | Masaki Kobayashi (screenplay) | Junpei Gomikawa (novel)
Run Time: 574 Mins.
Street Date: 8 June 2021
Aspect Ratio: 2.39:1
Video Format: AVC 1080p
Primary Audio: Japanese LPCM 1.0 (Parts 1-4) | Japanese DTS-HD MA 4.0 Surround (Parts 5 & 6)
Subtitles: English

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The Human Condition ( Parts 1 & 2)

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‘The Martian’ A Near Perfect Study of the Human Condition (FILM REVIEW)

By James Roberts
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[rating=9.00]

The isolated man has been a theme of literature since, well, we’ve had literature. The need for connection is so innate that the exploration of its absence offers us a deep and resonating insight into the pathos of the human condition. From Robinson Crusoe to Castaway , the stories of man are littered with tales of people struggling to maintain some semblance of their humanity in the face of towering isolation. Of course, in all of literature, there has perhaps been no man more isolated than The Martian ’s Mark Watney.

Like all of isolation literature, there’s not a whole lot about The Martian that we haven’t seen before. Watney (Matt Damon, who literally carries the film on his shoulders) is a NASA astronaut on one of the first manned missions to Mars. When a freak storm forces the abrupt abortion of the mission, Watney is left by his crew, who mistakes him for dead. Against all odds, in the most inhospitable environment imaginable, he must find a way to survive until NASA can figure out a way to save their missing man.

The beauty of this construct is in its simplicity. Where The Martian differs from its forebears is in the extremity of its character’s isolation. Tales like Castaway are frustrating due to the knowledge that help is, theoretically anyway, nearby. Civilization exists somewhere beyond the shores and the distant horizon. A deserted island may be a foreign locale, but Mars is another beast entirely. It is a place of myth that just so happens to actually exist. The Red Planet speaks to humanity due both to its familiarity—the mountains and deserts of the fourth rock from the sun look none too different from the geological construction of, say, Utah— and its stark differences.

Really, it’s the perfect setting for a grounded sci-fi, and The Martian utilizes this beautifully. Director Ridley Scott has valiantly dashed the criticism of his naysayers who claimed that the director had lost his touch after the disappointment of Prometheus . He’s managed to capture the wonder and awe of the source material from novelist/NASA enthusiast Andy Weir and translate it with stunning clarity for the big screen. Never before has Mars looked so vibrant or felt so alive.

As mentioned above, The Martian is very literally carried by its star. We watch Watney as he struggles to find a way to sustain himself until such time as he can be rescued. Using wit, intellect, and science, he overcomes obstacle after perilous obstacle in his efforts to survive. It would have been very easy for the film to descend into cheese and schlock, but Damon’s efforts and charm create a fully actualized character for whom you cannot help but root. For anyone with any doubts as to Damon’s ability as an actor, your fears are unfounded. It’s the performance of a career for Damon, and I expect he will be rewarded come awards season.

The real appeal of The Martian is in its study of humanity. As simple an idea as “bring him home” is conceptually, back on earth things are not as cut and dry as we would like to believe. There are political realities to consider, budgetary constraints, and operational logistics that all stand in the way of the simplicity of the solution. The juxtaposition—Watney’s “get it done” mentality vs. NASA and earth’s bureaucratic hand wringing—encompasses all facets of the human struggle. As much as NASA and NASA director Teddy Sanders (Jeff Daniels) wants to be able to just get it done, they are forced to contend with outside considerations such as cost and feasibility. The dueling nature of the various realities of man so often come to a head, and it’s displayed here perfectly.

My one major qualm with The Martian was in the portrayal of Watney’s crew, who don’t get near enough screen time or quality characterization, considering their importance to the overall story. They feel like afterthoughts, mostly, or a plot device at best. It’s a shame because, in the novel, they’re all deeply fleshed out characters with motivations and plot momentum. Here, they’re little more than cutouts used as props. Still, despite these limitations, the cast does a mostly fine job with their material and any criticism I could levy at them would be little more than pointless quibbling.

In short, The Martian is one of the best films of this or any year. It’s the sort of reality based, grounded science fiction that has been missing from both literature and cinema for too many years now. Not everything needs to be bigger and badder to catch our attention. Alien invasions don’t need to be thrust of your sci-fi epic. Humanity, after all, provides a deep enough reservoir for exploration, and we don’t need a world ending plot device to catch our attention. Sometimes it’s enough to hold one life in the balance. Sometimes one life is all you need to remind yourself that all life is beautiful.

The Martian is in theaters now.

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Review: In ‘Housekeeping for Beginners,’ a makeshift family evokes universal pain

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Romania’s Anamaria Marinca has a knack for playing characters you’d want in your corner during a crisis. The actor, who starred in Cristian Mungiu’s harrowing 2007 abortion thriller “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days,” is the eye of the storm in Goran Stolevski’s “Housekeeping for Beginners,” a riveting domestic drama that finds her similarly raging against the machine.

No one smokes a cigarette with such quiet, harried intensity as Marinca, nor is there any forgetting her glittering stare, both of which Stolevski utilizes to great effect. In his third feature in as many years — this one was selected as Macedonia’s Oscar entry for international feature — the filmmaker plunges us into a swirling eddy of merry but harrowing chaos among an unusual family. The film is a showcase for the skill and screen presence of the criminally underrated Marinca, who stars as Dita, a lesbian social worker trying to hold together her tribe by sheer force of will, coaxing and cajoling the system in order to knit together her queer found family.

There’s a deeply humanist core to Stolevski’s work, which varies in genre and tone, but always captures the bittersweet beauty of life. He made his feature debut with 2022’s “You Won’t Be Alone,” a life-affirming fairy tale in which Marinca co-starred as a grotesquely disfigured witch. His sophomore feature, “Of an Age,” is a romance about two young men who connect in a beach town in Melbourne.

We enter “Housekeeping for Beginners” with a burst of joyous song, as Ali (Samson Selim), Vanesa (Mia Mustafa) and Mia (Dzada Selim) dance and sing around a living room. Their carefree fun is quickly juxtaposed with a burst of rage in a doctor’s office, as Suada (Alina Serban), with Marinca’s Dita by her side, explodes at a bored, negligent doctor. She’s furious at him for ignoring patients who look like her: Roma. With these two scenes, Stolevski establishes the film’s message and tone, weaving together childlike play and mischief with the crushing reality of racial and sexual inequality.

Friends participate in a formal marriage ceremony at a city hall.

Stolevski, who wrote, directed and edited the film, delivers the relevant story details in snippets of dialogue and visual asides snatched out of the river of familial hubbub that is captured with a roaming handheld camera by cinematographer Naum Doksevski. Dita and Suada are partners. Suada’s kids, Vanesa and Mia, live with them in Dita’s home. Their gay roommate, Toni (Vladimir Tintor), had Ali over for a hookup, but Ali is so much fun he becomes one of the stray queer kids they collect, which also includes a trio of young lesbians (Sara Klimoska, Rozafa Celaj and Ajse Useini) who seek refuge in this “safe house.”

Suada has cancer and knowing that her prognosis is terminal, she demands that Dita become the mother of her girls: a final, fierce act to secure their future. She also requests that Dita give them Toni’s last name so that they might escape the discrimination she faced as a Roma woman. The girls need legal guardians and that is how a stressed lesbian and grumpy gay man find themselves married. To each other.

Within “Housekeeping’s” restless, naturalistic aesthetic, Stolevski crafts complex and poignant images, contrasting the playacting the couple is forced to do with their searing gazes. At a parent-teacher conference, condolences are delivered to Toni, but the camera rests on the bereaved Dita’s face, unable to openly grieve the loss of her longtime partner. Their formal courthouse wedding is also a study in ironic double meaning, as Ali sits next to his lover Toni, but only as a witness. At a raucous, booze-soaked celebration at home later, Ali thanks Dita for the opportunity to sit in front of the marriage registrar with the man he loves.

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There’s no preciousness or over-explication about the sociopolitical issues that shape their reality and make up the fabric of their lives: how they move in the world, the risks they take, the dreams they have. It is a quotidian kind of oppression, rendered here as a series of irritating clerical hoops, though the consequences of not jumping through them could be deadly.

While Stolevski’s subject matter is sobering, there is a dry humor at play, coupled with real warmth. Dzada Selim steals the movie as the precocious Mia, and if Dita is the spine of the family, Samson Selim’s Ali is its heart, his ability to connect proving valuable when Vanesa’s teenage rebellions spiral out of control.

Stolevski’s scripts always bear a line that pierces the heart of life itself and “Housekeeping for Beginners” is no exception. “It doesn’t go away, the needing,” Dita promises Vanesa, “even when you get old. It’s a nasty business.” It’s a beautiful, brutally apt way to describe both a family and the human condition, concisely expressed in the way only Stolevski can.

Katie Walsh is a Tribune News Service film critic.

'Housekeeping for Beginners'

In Macedonian, Albanian and Romani, with English subtitles Rating: R, for sexual content, language throughout and some teen drinking Running time: 1 hour, 47 minutes Playing: Now at AMC The Grove 14, Los Angeles; AMC Century City 15

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‘Omen’ Review: Life in a Different Space-Time Continuum

This trippy ensemble drama set in Kinshasa explores Congolese society through magical realism.

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A person’s face is visible in purple-tinted mist. The eyelids are painted yellow, with black dots.

By Beatrice Loayza

Halfway through “Omen,” a trippy ensemble drama set in Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Tshala (Eliane Umuhire) tries to reason with Alice (Lucie Debay), the white fiancé of her big brother Koffi (Marc Zinga). Alice, who lives with Koffi in Belgium, is justifiably overwhelmed: Her future in-laws refuse to acknowledge her existence, and, after Koffi accidentally bleeds from his nose onto an infant relative, he is nailed into a wooden mask as punishment.

“We’re in a different space-time continuum,” Tshala explains.

The director, Bajoli (a multidisciplinary artist and rapper whose name means “sorcerer” in Swahili), runs with this idea: that Congolese society, highly superstitious as it is, operates on another — frenzied, magical, gender-bending — wavelength.

The film fills out this wild world by navigating four loosely connected stories. There’s Koffi, who receives a bitter homecoming. Tshala is in a polyamorous relationship. Mujila (Yves-Marina Gnahoua), a menacing matriarch, is upended by her husband’s death. Finally, there’s Paco (Marcel Otete Kabeya), an orphan who leads a gang of tutu-wearing street kids — this thread, the most chaotic of the four, plays like a Grimms’ fairy tale about shantytown residents.

To say “Omen” is ambitious feels like an understatement. The film begins with a mystical interlude in which a woman pours her breast milk into a river, and sustains this vivid symbolism throughout, making details with natural explanations (a birthmark, a seizure) take on an otherworldly heft.

In its best moments, a quiet element of absurdity grounds the spectacle. We sense the fatigue and — because family is inescapable — weirdly amused resignation, such as when Tshala, giving a goblin’s smirk, assuages Alice. Otherwise, the film’s frenetic world-building eventually becomes numbing, in part because the uneven human dramas — each one offers a vague message about marginalization — lose momentum in all the commotion.

Omen Not rated. In French, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. In theaters.

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COMMENTS

The Human Condition I: No Greater Love
The Human Condition is a masterpiece of cinema, and this first part starts off slow, but steadily unfolds to tell an unforgettable story. Once the story picks up, the film moves at a steady pace ...
Criterion Review: THE HUMAN CONDITION
Masaki Kobayashi's Wartime Odyssey THE HUMAN CONDITION, starring Tatsuya Nakadai, is worth every minute of the 9.5-hour journey. ... Criterion Review: THE HUMAN CONDITION Julian Singleton. July 6, 2021 September 4, ... and although there have been many tempting suitors, his favorite movie is and will probably always be Magnolia. https ...
The Human Condition (film series)
The Human Condition (人間の條件, Ningen no jōken) is a trilogy of Japanese epic war drama films co-written and directed by Masaki Kobayashi, based on the novel of the same name by Junpei Gomikawa.The films are subtitled No Greater Love (1959), Road to Eternity (1959), and A Soldier's Prayer (1961).. The trilogy follows the life of Kaji, a Japanese pacifist and socialist, as he tries to ...
The Human Condition Review :: Criterion Forum
Synopsis. This mammoth humanist drama by Masaki Kobayashi is one of the most staggering achievements of Japanese cinema. Originally filmed and released in three installments of two parts each, the nine-and-a-half-hour The Human Condition, adapted from Junpei Gomikawa's six-volume novel, tells of the journey of the well-intentioned yet naive ...
'The Human Condition' Review: A Japanese Epic in High-Def
The 9-and-a-half-hour film, set in wartime Japan, gets a digital restoration from the Criterion Collection that underscores its tragic dimensions. By. David Mermelstein. June 8, 2021 5:22 pm ET ...
'The Human Condition' (Movie 1959-61): Masaki Kobayashi's Classic Trilogy
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 ...
The Human Condition (1959)
The Human Condition. This mammoth humanist drama by Masaki Kobayashi is one of the most staggering achievements of Japanese cinema. Originally filmed and released in three installments of two parts each, the nine-and-a-half-hour The Human Condition, adapted from Junpei Gomikawa's six-volume novel, tells of the journey of the well-intentioned ...
The Human Condition Review :: Criterion Forum
Picture 7/10. Criterion presents Masaki Kobayashi's trilogy The Human Condition in the aspect ratio of 2.35:1 over three dual-layer discs of this four disc set. The image has been enhanced for widescreen televisions. While the image can be problematic at times I was more than happy with it overall. The quality of the transfers is about equal ...
Blu-ray Review: The Human Condition
Jun 15, 2021 Web Exclusive By Kaveh Jalinous. Easily one of the greatest film trilogies of all time, Masaki Kobayashi's The Human Condition is a sweeping nine-and-a-half-hour epic about the horrors of war. Each of the three films is divided into two parts. Together, they tell the story of Kaji (Tatsuya Nakadai), a pacifist and socialist ...
The Human Condition I: No Greater Love (1959)
The Human Condition I: No Greater Love: Directed by Masaki Kobayashi. With Tatsuya Nakadai, Michiyo Aratama, Chikage Awashima, Ineko Arima. A Japanese pacifist, unable to face the dire consequences of conscientious objection, is transformed by his attempts to compromise with the demands of war-time Japan.
Review: Masaki Kobayashi's The Human Condition on Criterion Blu-ray
The Human Condition is an indisputably solemn film, but it also possesses a restless vitality, with hard cuts juxtaposing abject brutality with pastoral tranquility and romantic longing. Scenes between Kaji and his fretful, yearning wife, Michiko (Aratama Michiyo), sometimes fall into domestic melodrama, yet often poignantly convey a loving couple's struggle to remain connected as ...
Kobayashi's The Human Condition Remains Bleak and Unforgettable
8 June 2021. It's entirely fitting that throughout The Human Condition, Masaki Kobayashi's epic three-part adaptation of an equally expansive novel by Junpei Gomikawa that was recently ...
The Human Condition I: No Greater Love (1959)
Overall, I'm very disappointed with The Human Condition. Based on the glowing reviews here, I was expecting a masterpiece to equal Kobayashi's other work from the 60's. It turns out THC is a war melodrama that might have been very popular in a devastated post-war Japan that was thirsty for the populist theme of humanism valiantly raising its ...
Blu-ray Review: Criterion Re-explores THE HUMAN CONDITION
The Human Condition should be of particular interest to students of Japanese history, World War II buffs, and fans of mid-twentieth century Japanese cinema. Criterion's initial release of ...
The Human Condition (Blu-ray Review)
The Human Condition was restored by Shochiku Co., Ltd. At IMAGICA Lab in Tokyo from 35mm prints made from the 35mm original camera negative. I'm not sure why this secondary method was used rather than restoring from the original camera negatives to a DI, but the image does look a bit like it has been degraded slightly.
Cry the High-Minded Hero in Brutal Japanese-Occupied Manchuria
NYT Critic's Pick. Directed by Masaki Kobayashi. Drama, War. Not Rated. 3h 28m. By A.O. Scott. July 18, 2008. In keeping with the grandeur of its title, "The Human Condition," adapted by ...
The Human Condition
I share my thoughts on the 3 part epic The Human Condition from director Masaki Kobayashi. Enjoy!If you are interested in this title and want to purchase fr...
The Human Condition ( Parts 1 & 2)
Masaki Kobayashi's mammoth humanist drama is one of the most staggering achievements of Japanese cinema. Originally filmed and released in three parts, the nine-and-a-half-hour The Human Condition (Ningen no joken), adapted from Junpei Gomikawa's six-volume novel, tells of the journey of the well-intentioned yet naive Kaji (handsome Japanese superstar Tatsuya Nakadai) from labor camp ...
'The Martian' A Near Perfect Study of the Human Condition (FILM REVIEW
Watney (Matt Damon, who literally carries the film on his shoulders) is a NASA astronaut on one of the first manned missions to Mars. When a freak storm forces the abrupt abortion of the mission, Watney is left by his crew, who mistakes him for dead. Against all odds, in the most inhospitable environment imaginable, he must find a way to ...
Review: The Human Condition
Review: The Human Condition. The film possesses a restless vitality, with hard cuts juxtaposing abject brutality with pastoral tranquility and romantic longing. by Matthew Connolly. September 9, 2009. Photo: Brandon Films. The issue of film length seems most often considered in terms of directorial self-indulgence testing the audience's patience.
'Housekeeping for Beginners' review: A found family survives
Review: In 'Housekeeping for Beginners,' a makeshift family evokes universal pain. Dzada Selim, left, and Anamaria Marinca in the movie "Housekeeping for Beginners.". Romania's Anamaria ...
'Omen' Review: Life in a Different Space-Time Continuum
Mujila (Yves-Marina Gnahoua), a menacing matriarch, is upended by her husband's death. Finally, there's Paco (Marcel Otete Kabeya), an orphan who leads a gang of tutu-wearing street kids ...

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The Human Condition

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Extras 6/10

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The Human Condition I: No Greater Love (I) (1959)

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The Human Condition is out on Blu-ray June 8, 2021 from the Criterion Collection.

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