The Human Condition (Masaki Kobayashi, 1959-1961)

[Mr Sausage]

Hah! I literally just tried to post that I'd found them, only for your post to come up. Thanks nonetheless!

[Mr Sausage]

Road to Eternity: Part 1

SpoilerShow

In a grim irony, Nakadai, one-time prison reformer, now finds himself jailed and subject to the cruelties and abuses he had sought to ameliorate. And that's the point the section drives at: that the camp and the barracks are two names for the same thing. One of the benefits of long-term story-telling like this is that you can pattern more widely, create parallels and echoes across a greater expanse of narrative. By itself, this section is a good, if familiar, indictment of military training. As part of the whole, we can see how much the barracks recapitulates what we saw in the work camp. This is where the brilliance starts to show, in the larger structural organization that can create this layered social critique. For instance, it is bad enough to see the men routinely beaten and humiliated for the smallest perceived slight, but worse when we remember every time that same thing happened to the prisoners and camp workers. The impression is that Imperial Japan treated its soldiers, the very men it depended on to secure its aims and for whom it was presumably governing the country, no differently than it treated its lowest and most exploitable social stratum. The movie also makes an implicit critique that functions as short hand: we are given little access to the functioning of the army brass, the decision makers; but because we have spent so much time with the decision makers at the camp, the parallels let us know that the brass works no differently, and with no less greed, selfishness, and pettiness.

The movie continues the strongest element of No Greater Love, the careful attention to the social structure of its chosen microcosm. Like the workers' camp, the barracks feels like a living entity, crammed with people and structured around a tangle of hierarchies, motivations, and duties that aren't easily reduced. The narrative feels less leaden, too: there are fewer scenes of intoned speeches, blunt moralizings, or lame romantic conversations. Almost every scene is fraught in some way or another, with violent or absurd intrusions peppering most interactions, and smaller conversations always shadowed by someone's hostile eyes. It allows Kobayashi to play to his strengths, ie. his gift for action. The opening scene sets the atmosphere perfectly: the men roused from bed without warning and beaten, one-by-one, without reason or recourse. Such will be the rest of the movie. It becomes so absurd that, by the end, Nakadai is being screamed at even for daring even to walk a couple steps out of bed without permission--and this in a hospital! Usually hospitals in war films serve as a kind of reprieve, but even here the prison-feel persists.

One of the darker aspects is the fact that Nakadai's resolve in the face of evil, his willingness to stand up for virtue, is, apparently, exactly what the brass like in a soldier, and they keep trying to promote him despite his utter distaste for everything he sees. Somehow, trying to be a decent man in spite of his training seems to be turning him into precisely what the training intends--an utter absurdity the film thankfully doesn't belabour.

I enjoyed myself here. The film felt less overtly didactic, more willing to make connections and draw parallels to make its points. It's still a guilt-sodden, self-flagellating story, but it's not as caught up in ideas of duty and virtue, or even ideas at all. It's a much smaller, more focused story. I look forward to the second part.

[ballmouse]

This is the first Film Club discussion I've decided to participate in (mostly because I happened to have the DVD here the same time the topic came up). I'm still working my way through Part 1 (around 45 minutes in). So far so good. I have two bullet points so far.

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The story, while filmed in 1959 and taking place during WWII, is still completely relevant in 2023. Look at the news regarding backlash of remote work or loss of minimum wage workers from the workforce and the proliferation of the r/antiwork subreddt (don't ask - I just happen to get shared a number of posts there). My own workplaces has similar conundrums regarding treatment of workers from management. Frankly, the system isn't squeaky clean. But it's designed by humans for humans, so how could it be really? I suppose I'm a cynic, but I'm a sucker for films that point out our own contradictions and corruption.

The second point is that as someone who speaks and understands Mandarin, the Mandarin used is quite awful. I want to believe Manchuria had some strange dialect or accent used, but I do find it much more likely the actors were not Mandarin speakers and didn't have time to learn the pronunciation. I didn't even realize they were speaking Mandarin the first few times it happened. I thought it might happen just a few times, but this happens multiple times with multiple different actresses and actors that I can't help but point it out now. Unfortunately, it really breaks the spell of the film, which is so far I've quite enjoyed. So in my head I'm going to try my best to imagine all the actors speaking it are Japanese ex-pats and that Manchuria had a strange regional pronunciation, instead of the analogous English equivalent of something like Nic Cage or Sean Connery trying to speak Spanish, playing a Spaniard without irony.

[Mr Sausage]

There are no Chinese actors in the movie, or even Chinese speakers. All the Chinese characters are played by Japanese actors speaking Mandarin phonetically. I don't even speak a Chinese language, and I could tell immediately that something was off.

[Michael Kerpan]

For a different sort of perspective on the Japanese war in China -- made at the time of the war, in China, not THAT far behind the front lines -- there is Fumio Kamei's 1938 Fighting Soldiers. Kamei was a fundamentally anti-war leftist -- and his depiction of exhausted soldiers (and his generally sympathetic picture of the conquered Chinese) got him into trouble. He was the only Japanese director arrested for being unpatriotic, and his license to direct films was revoked. His right to direct was restored after the war ended -- and he proceeded to make a film that castigated the Japanese government (and especially the Emperor) for fighting the war in the first place. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the American Occupation authorities banned THIS film. (It was initially approved, but when MacArthur found out about the finished product he was apparently quite unhappy about it).

[ballmouse]

There are no Chinese actors in the movie, or even Chinese speakers. All the Chinese characters are played by Japanese actors speaking Mandarin phonetically. I don't even speak a Chinese language, and I could tell immediately that something was off.

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I just got to the point where the comfort women try to talk dirty in Mandarin, and it's actually so bad it's funny. But I know it's blasphemous, but I now want a redubbed version of the film for the Mandarin parts because it seems 1/3 (if not more) of the dialogue now is in Mandarin.

Still, the film is still enjoyable, though I wonder how the phonetic translator felt after preparing the actors and actresses or if Kobayashi and the producers had any idea how bad the Mandarin was.

[ballmouse]

I finished Part 2 (the 2nd half of the 1st Criterion disc).

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I don't think it matches up to Part 1, which I quite liked. Part 2 was a little melodramatic and there seemed to be scenes that were superfluous. They didn't move the plot and they repeated what we already knew. Maybe they were meant to reinforce our feelings. I guess I'm the wrong audience then.

I do think it would have been nice to see Kaji's improvements in the mining camps. We hear that they've hit their production quota, but we only see Kaji's frustration. It also makes the conversations between him and the POWs about trust and friendship hard to understand since we never see any of Kaji's "victories". I think it raises the question within the audience: why doesn't he give in? Much like a less than stellar job, we stay because of the the small, emotional highs that give us hope things may improve or that "things aren't all so bad" (and the pay of course. Perhaps that could have also been shown as well, although Kaji does not seem like he would have been influenced much by his salary or any potential raises/promotions). I think those little bits of happiness would have been nice to show to some extent. It would tether Kaji's position a little closer to the realities we all face. Instead, it makes Kaji's story seem less relatable and the whole story something we tune out a little given the repetition and the filtered POV. Of course, perhaps it's better to pound that POV in.

With regard to the posts regarding Kaji's decision, I think they all choices are rotten. But that's the game of "middle management", which is the tier Kaji was stuck with. You're told to feed your subordinates, but you're only given rotten bananas (why this came into my head I don't know). You're given a responsibility you can't possibly control given the decisions made by your superiors create a scenario of contradictions. So how does middle management work in the present? Off the top of my head, they quit because they can no longer reconcile the conditions of work with their personal code; they compartmentalize work and self and act as employee at work and live outside work as another person; they aren't bothered by work conditions because they see nothing wrong or that work is supposed to be this way; or they raise a stink, which rarely resolves the issue because the issue is the whole system. I'm sure there are others, but this is what came to mind. And in no case does anything change. We're in a system designed by humans for humans. It will never satisfy everyone in every way. Unfortunately, a system 50% good in ethics (if that makes sense) is "good enough" and that makes folks like Kaji who wants a system that is 100% ethical suffer.

[ballmouse]

Road to Eternity: Part 1

SpoilerShow

In a grim irony, Nakadai, one-time prison reformer, now finds himself jailed and subject to the cruelties and abuses he had sought to ameliorate. And that's the point the section drives at: that the camp and the barracks are two names for the same thing. One of the benefits of long-term story-telling like this is that you can pattern more widely, create parallels and echoes across a greater expanse of narrative. By itself, this section is a good, if familiar, indictment of military training. As part of the whole, we can see how much the barracks recapitulates what we saw in the work camp. This is where the brilliance starts to show, in the larger structural organization that can create this layered social critique. For instance, it is bad enough to see the men routinely beaten and humiliated for the smallest perceived slight, but worse when we remember every time that same thing happened to the prisoners and camp workers. The impression is that Imperial Japan treated its soldiers, the very men it depended on to secure its aims and for whom it was presumably governing the country, no differently than it treated its lowest and most exploitable social stratum. The movie also makes an implicit critique that functions as short hand: we are given little access to the functioning of the army brass, the decision makers; but because we have spent so much time with the decision makers at the camp, the parallels let us know that the brass works no differently, and with no less greed, selfishness, and pettiness.

The movie continues the strongest element of No Greater Love, the careful attention to the social structure of its chosen microcosm. Like the workers' camp, the barracks feels like a living entity, crammed with people and structured around a tangle of hierarchies, motivations, and duties that aren't easily reduced. The narrative feels less leaden, too: there are fewer scenes of intoned speeches, blunt moralizings, or lame romantic conversations. Almost every scene is fraught in some way or another, with violent or absurd intrusions peppering most interactions, and smaller conversations always shadowed by someone's hostile eyes. It allows Kobayashi to play to his strengths, ie. his gift for action. The opening scene sets the atmosphere perfectly: the men roused from bed without warning and beaten, one-by-one, without reason or recourse. Such will be the rest of the movie. It becomes so absurd that, by the end, Nakadai is being screamed at even for daring even to walk a couple steps out of bed without permission--and this in a hospital! Usually hospitals in war films serve as a kind of reprieve, but even here the prison-feel persists.

One of the darker aspects is the fact that Nakadai's resolve in the face of evil, his willingness to stand up for virtue, is, apparently, exactly what the brass like in a soldier, and they keep trying to promote him despite his utter distaste for everything he sees. Somehow, trying to be a decent man in spite of his training seems to be turning him into precisely what the training intends--an utter absurdity the film thankfully doesn't belabour.

I enjoyed myself here. The film felt less overtly didactic, more willing to make connections and draw parallels to make its points. It's still a guilt-sodden, self-flagellating story, but it's not as caught up in ideas of duty and virtue, or even ideas at all. It's a much smaller, more focused story. I look forward to the second part.

I have just finished watching this part (Part 1 of Road to Eternity or Part 3 of the series).

SpoilerShow

I echo how eloquently you structured this. It was very thematic to bring Kaji to the lowest level of the hierarchy.

One piece of dialogue which stuck with me was how the officers outright disallow "personal feuds". I have no idea if this was a throwaway line because it was never expanded further. And yet I could not help see the contradiction of the point. Aren't the soldiers individualized and discriminated because of their perceived faults? Isn't the reason that Kaji is in the military due to a personal feud? Aren't the same officers who disallow "personal feuds" having those feuds with supposed "Reds"? The individualized criticism is even escalated to bullying, something highlighted as against regulations. And yet there is no linking of these actions to a personal feud, which is what they are. If promotion is based on individual achievement and accomplishment, how can one not keep in mind personal failure or disagreement? In fact, there are no "agree to disagree" moments at all in the 3 parts. Those in power force those under them to capitulate and fall in line, no matter the argument.

That said, there were 2 scenes which I singled out as...curious...in the study of Kaji's character. The first was his request for his wife to undress under moonlight. I understand his stated reason to burn the image into his head, but it seems out of character from what I've seen. In no instance before has he shown any desire to indulge in his wife physically. Perhaps the army had broken him down? His wife also breaks down after fulfilling the request, seemingly with the realization she has nothing to offer her husband. I'm not sure if this was the realization that she is not physically beautiful or that her husband stooping to physical effects shows that he doesn't see anything else of use from her or just some melodramatic throwaway line that would have been "womanly" for her to say.

The next was just prior to the prairie fire. It seemed he was about to attack his officer. Previously, we saw him attack his assistant in No Greater Love. But that was clearly spur of the moment and emotionally charged. This sequence showed he had clearly played the idea out in his head beforehand and that he was still visualizing it as he was approaching the officer. Why? Again, has his army experience broken him down? Is it because now he's at the bottom tier of the social hierarchy that it seems appropriate? He was always playing the pacifist and taking the beatings. He had never played the role of aggressor before.

[Mr Sausage]

SpoilerShow

Oh yeah, it's only a personal feud when someone of a lower or equal rank does it. If someone of a higher rank does it, it's army training. The hypocrisy is amazing

[ballmouse]

I have finished the series.

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I must admit I liked each of the films in the trilogy progressively less, so consequently the 3rd film A Soldier's Prayer tested my endurance the most. In the first few parts of the trilogy, Kaji's ideals of humane treatment and morals are emphasized over and over, a sort of high minded message. By the end, he is effectively crushed and becomes a morally, rationally twisted beast. That end state does not bother me. I suppose what I found tiresome was the fact we got there the way we did. I understood the failure of authority to be responsible. I understood that some individuals are corrupt. But I didn't quite understand why Kaji continually put himself in progressively worse positions by dragging along every straggler he met as his objective become personal at that point and that he had seemingly come to the realization that there was little in common between him and other men. I was cheering for him when he finally decided to let every man go his own way, but that was right before he was captured and taken into a POW camp. I don't know if there was any additional message to convey with Kaji in a POW camp given we had seen a POW camp in No Greater Love and Kaji at the lowest tier of the power hierarchy earlier as well. I suppose the Kafka-esque sequence with the translator was interesting, though that was about it. Even reintroducing Tange doesn't seem to add much. (As a side note for those viewers like me who have poor recollection of actors, Lt. Kageyama in Road to Eternity is his friend introduced at the very beginning of the trilogy. I hope I save someone the time of searching the internet to figure out who that was.)

I have no idea if this was the intent, but by the end I had given up on the trilogy's initial societal premise. Given the surrealism and constant panging for his wife, I had the understanding that dreams are what keep men sane in an insane world. There is a division between the real, physical world and the mental one. Peace in the physical world cannot be achieved physically or in reality. The conflicts within society make that impossible. Dreams and our own mental satisfaction are what we can control. In an unideal physical world, having dreams or mental satisfaction Is what keeps us sane, even if it in reality looks insane.