atrocity brings out true humanity

DVDs:

	• The Human Condition- Criterion Collection Tatsuya Nakadai, Michiyo Aratama Criterion, 2009 average customer review:based on 11 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

A Masterpiece for the World

However one may define the highest achievements of cinema, "The Human Condition" belongs in that panoply.

Other reviewers have provided excellent descriptions of the film's content, so there is no need to expound further on those details.

Suffice it to say that "The Human Condition," so aptly named, speaks uniquely to each individual. As does all great art.

"The Human Condition" can be appreciated and interpreted on many levels --- one man's struggle to preserve decency and altruism in a savage world; one filmmaker's attempt to express the reality of brutal militarism to his own traumatized society; ...

My personal reaction to "The Human Condition" was akin to my reaction to Erich Maria Remarque's "Im Westen Nichts Neues" (in both book and film).

Whereas "Im Westen" was swept aside by Hitler and the Nazis, allowing Germany a collective amnesia of the horrors of World War I, Kobayashi's film has reflected and influenced Japan's determination to seek a different future after 1945.

My only regret? I do not believe that Gomikawa's novel is available in English. It would be interesting to see if the text which inspired the film has the same impact as the film.

Kaji will remain with the viewer long after the final frame. He dies alone in a desolate wilderness. But he does not die "like a dog," as have so many of his countrymen.

Kaji dies with an unshakable dignity.

Imperfect humans who fail to achieve their own standards and ideals can still achieve nobility by making the effort.

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atrocity brings out true humanity

"the human condition" is by far the most difficult movie that I have gone through, not only for its length but for the truthful account of being a honorable human being under extreme conditions and the hefty price coming with it.
would Kaji have had a better fate had he just kept his ideals to himself and gone with the flow? In peaceful time maybe, but in wartime especially for a soilder of the defeated nation, it would be almost imposibble for him to escape other tragic events that still lead him to his fate. Of course in good times we all can afford to be a decent human being, but under extreme conditions, how many of us would not cast aside the so called "principle" in order to survive? This movie is a true tastament of humanity. It will surely leave a lasting impression. highly recommended.

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The INHUMAN Condition

If you are still unpersuaded of "Man's Inhumanity to Man", you probably should watch this epic film. If you personally have trouble acknowledging guilt, and especially if you have trouble acknowledging societal guilt -- that is, your unescapable personal responsibility for the actions of your society -- you must watch this film. On the other hand, if you are Chinese, you perhaps ought to avoid this film; it is a soul-rending confession of the hideous cruelty practiced in forced labor camps. It will be too painful to watch, and it might well inflame resentments that would better be put on ice.

The Human Condition is beautifully photographed in black-and-white, every frame a calligraphic composition; beautifully acted by Nakadai Tatsuyo and a cast of familiar faces from the great age of samurai films, familiar yet completely 'in character' in this film; beautifully scripted ... and extremely long, 4 DVDs worth of bleak landscape, violence, and anguish.

Did it need to be so long? Director Kobayashi Masaki must have thought so; he worked on this film for four years, and his other supreme cinema masterpiece - Harakiri - demonstrates his mastery of terse editing and compaction of drama. Though it has 'chapter' titles, The Human Condition is NOT a series of episodes; it develops thoroughly and coherently as a single story. Critics have suggested that the central character, a young Japanese intellectual who resists the inhuman behaviors of his countrymen, is at least partially a self-depiction by Kobayashi, who was compelled to serve in the Japanese army in WW2 but who refused to rise above the lowest rank, in daring protest against the military warlords. Every scene of The Human Condition conveys, to me at least, a sense of the overwhelming importance of the total Truth to the filmmaker. Obviously Kobayashi was not seeking to produce an evening's entertainment, or a commercial bonanza, or even Art for art's sake. So, yes, I think it needs to be that long. It's the whole truth of a man's life.

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Amazing!!!

have heard alot about this film over the years. thanks to Criterion for bringing it back into circulation, i was able to purchase and watch it for the first time.

more like a mini series than a film (comes on 3 disks, over 9 hours) the length of this film actually enhances the expereince.
watched it over 3 nights, and at the end of each night couldn't wait to watch the next disk.

If you read all the reviews here , I am sure you will get a much more in depth review than i offer here. All i will say that this film is a masterpiece whose images will stay with you long after you have seen the film.

Highly Reccomnded!!!

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Deserves All the Accolades

In thinking how to sum up the character of this series of films, I can only regret that descriptions such as: monumental, epic, staggering, etc., etc. have been overused to the point of triteness. This is truly a story which could take those terms out of the realm of hyperbole and give them an appropriate application.

What makes this film series "monumental", though, is not spectacles of battle scenes nor glorious panoramas of natural landscapes, although such things are artistically depicted. The thing that really imparts such stature to the film, for me, is that the director took the time and effort to tell the story in a way that gives it both authenticity and a sense of completeness.

To help understand the painstaking effort that went into this production, it is well worthwhile to watch the fourth disc in this four-disc set, which contains the supplementary material. There we learn that actual shooting of the films took three years, with two six-month breaks in between segments. Tatsuya Nakadai, who portrayed Kaji, the hero of the series, tells us that he, along with all the cast who portrayed soldiers, underwent a month-long course of military training so they could present authentic portrayals of soldiers. Nakadai relates that many of the scenes which look so grueling on the screen were in fact grueling to the actors. He lay in a shallow hole while a tank roared over him, was actually beaten in some of the barracks scenes, jumped into freezing rivers, and lay in snow until covered, so that he feared dying of hypothermia.

Director Masaki Kobayashi demanded such strenuous participation from his cast to give the story a corroborating visual appearance of authenticity. Kobayashi had credentials of great credibility to confirm his perspective on the events of the films, as he himself had experienced many of the same issues as Kaji, the fictional hero. He had felt strong doubts about the rightness of Japan's militarism, had refused promotion to officer rank after being inducted, and had been a POW.

This striving for authentic detail succeeded admirably in the finished product. It was the strong continuity, consistency, and attention to detail which caused me to identify more and more with Kaji in his arduous struggles to maintain his integrity, self-respect, and ideals. Within this continuity of theme, we see the character of Kaji evolve with his accumulated first-hand experience of the brutality and depravity of which humanity is capable under conditions of war. With his loss of innocence, he confronts the dark side of his own nature, feeling the temptation to forsake his ideals in the struggle for mere survival.

If it were not for this element of ambiguity or relativity about the nature of good and evil, Kaji might have simply been an unbelievable paragon of virtue. But because of his confrontation with the evil existing within his own depths, waiting the opportunity to seize control of his actions, he retains his credibility and holds out to us the possibility that a man may retain his basic humanity even under the most monstrous and inhuman conditions. This integrity of principled self-respect is shown to be a fragile and delicate flame, constantly in danger of being extinguished by the brutalizing force of war and its aftermath.

As I progressed through the more than nine hours of this series, my imagination was engaged more and more; I can truthfully say that it became better and exerted a more profound influence with each succeeding episode. From starting out as a certain individual's experiences during a war which took place in a certain location at a certain time, the story acquired a universal character, showing the stupidity of war, and revealing the private war that goes on in the conscience of the individual, when the restraints of civilization are subordinated to the impulses of nationalism, militarism, and greed.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3

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.

Stills from The Human Condition (Click for larger image)

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