Tied for the best movie I have ever seen

Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

"Lawrence of Arabia" (1962) and "Profound Desires of the Gods" (1968) are epic, immense films in size and scope. So is Gance's "Napoléon" (1927). And still, Kobayashi's "The Human Condition", released in three parts from 1959 to 1961, tends to stand out. Three films, each three hours or longer, and still a singular journey, "one of the most monumental acts of personal expiation in all cinematic history."[1] The quote is from Philip Kemp, and it is good to know a few things about Kobayashi the director. Critical of the war and shipped to Manchuria, living as a POW under the Americans, he's not that unlike to Kaji the protagonist. This is a film made by someone who had seen war, and knew firsthand what its criticism meant. I believe this to be an important point to remember as one discusses Kaji's character, and his perceived flaws.It's easy enough to brush the first film aside as a mere introduction to a story that unfolds and ripens in its due course. This interpretation is enhanced by Kaji's character, whose personality and actions are seen as naive and altogether misinformed and stubborn. When one sees the trilogy as a kind of developing progression of his philosophy and ethics, it is easy to overlook the virtues of this film and disregard it as elementary.Yet this is no lesser work. In visual terms, the deserted space of the mining complex, inhabited by so small people against such an infinite backdrop, anticipates the visually contrapuntal existential alienation of the sixties Teshigahara and Antonioni.Kaji, played to perfection by Nakadai Tatsyua, is no saint. I think it would be too easy to attribute to him only naive and pure intentions, as he's actually a rather ruthless individual from the beginning. He's an idealist, sure; often naive, certainly; but far from blameless, and what often seems like his naiveté might actually betray stubbornness rooted in self-righteousness. In the very first scene where he discusses marriage and sex with Michiko he certainly seems to me as holier-than-thou and standing on a pedestal in how he proves a point by playing a trick on her.Indeed, while it might be eloquent to describe the three films as his downward spiral, his fall from grace, I think this is amiss. What is irritating about Kaji is not that he's always in the right but that he persistently thinks he's in the right. He's so devoted to his cause that nothing else matters. This is his strength and weakness, something which some viewers too easily tend to attribute to be the film's weakness. Much of the film's greatest drama comes from his stubbornness, bordering on and often transcending the inane and annoying, especially his utter lack of subtlety.Yet he needs to be this way. Not only so that what follows will hit harder, but his figure is not tragic simply because he's a man of ideals and stands up for them, it's because in some ways he's just as ruthless as those he criticizes.A key to this interpretation is found in his marriage and relationship with Michio. For me it's the central tragedy in the film, not only because of what Kaji and Michiko end up losing because of Kaji's plight but also because of Kaji himself. He's a man who feels deeply, yet is so blinded by his mission that he helps to destroy his marriage, and Michiko to an extent, even before the end of the first film. The title of the first film, "No Greater Love," not only refers to Jn 15:13 ("Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends") and in a way to Kaji's mission to help others, but also to the love Michiko has for Kaji, a love that he will find unparalleled and lost to him.FOOTNOTES: [1] Philip Kemp, "The Human Condition: The Prisoner," retrieved 26 August 2015 from the Criterion Collection website.

The Human Condition has too many technical flaws, goes on too long, and, especially, its first 60% gets annoyingly moralistic and preachy at times (although Kaji does sink into a bit of justifiable depravity by film's end), to be considered an inarguably great film, but so much of the rest of it is assuredly great that it has to be in the argument for greatness, therefore I can term it a near-great film, even if, for many, it will seem an irredeemably depressing film; not unlike Theo Angelopoulos's The Weeping Meadow. This observation is true, but it is not a reason to avoid the film, nor art, because a work of art that depresses is not to say that it is not successful for that, if its depression spurs one on to cogitation over why this is. Also, criticism of the love that Kaji holds for his wife are all based on the assumption that the lead character is supposed to be an idealization of the average man rather than an example of the rare man, the potentially great man, who is denied his due. Therefore, the commonplace qualities of love and fidelity that a superior man holds become, in this misinterpretation, an idealized and unrealistically (capital r) Romantic flaw. But that is the flaw of the critics, not the artist.The film's equivocal excellence is probably no better exemplified than in its portrait of the Japanese Army. On the one hand the film seems to go a bit too light in its portrayal of the Japanese mistreatment of its Chinese victims (for with every passing year it seems that the Japanese Imperial Army made the Nazis seem like rank amateurs in human depravity), yet, on the other hand, the film does a great service in its humanizing of the average Japanese soldier from inhuman automatonic supermen to flawed misfits who often criticize and mock their superiors and the war's rightness. And while it abounds in caricatures and near-caricatures, the film also does an outstanding job of getting to specific moments of intensity (however prosaically- not poetically- rendered) between characters, in what would otherwise seem a mundane interaction. This allows for the speedy introduction of characters and building of empathy with them.The DVD, by The Criterion Collection, is one of the best releases they have had in the last couple of years. I've chided the company for skimping on audio commentaries in recent years, but this film's length, and the fact that it is spread over three disks, pretty much obviates any necessity for a commentary, and even an enthusiastic talking head like Japanese film expert Donald Richie or film critic Roger Ebert (were he healthy) would inevitably spend most of the nine plus hours on dead air. As usual, I wish all black and white films had easier to read subtitles than mere white font, but there are only a few instances of difficult to read wordings. Given that this film had an international release at a time when foreign films were routinely dubbed, it would have been great to have had an English language audio dubbed option, for likely one existed. There is an oddity in that there are Japanese subtitles on the right side of the screen for the Japanese audience, at moments characters speak Chinese. The fourth disk has all the supplements, and while it is missing an extended making of featurette, there are some good moments in interviews conducted with the film's director and star, and a short video bon mot of the film from Japanese filmmaker Masahiro Shinoda. There are some trailers and an insert essay, as well. But, this is there are DVD where the extras are really just that. Even with nothing, this film is worth seeing. It is also a very good restoration, in a 2.35:1 aspect ratio, of the film compared to earlier VHS and DVD releases, many of which split the film into its three parts: No Greater Love (1959), Road To Eternity (1960), and A Soldier's Prayer (1961).The film's cinematography, by Yoshio Miyajima, is always solid, with a few moments of adventure- such as a shot as a tank roars overhead, but it is never spectacular. The scenes shot in a studio often clash with location shots, texturally. As for the use of black and white, no one is liable to confuse this film with the masterworks of an Orson Welles nor Michelangelo Antonioni. The film's score is one of its weakest elements, too often telegraphing 'important' moments. Nakasdai's acting dominates the film, for he is in virtually ever scene, and his slow transmogrification from bleeding heart liberal who sells out to stoic killing machine (he's an excellent soldier despite his avowed humanism) who years for his wife is subtle, believable, and most importantly, lets the viewer empathize with him. The Human Condition is one of those works of art that is not great, but has so much going on, at any moment, that it is not difficult to forgive its flaws- even those that glare, for another excellent or better moment will soon recapture your admiration. And, it's only in true epics that such largess is to be found. Excelsior!

Kobayashi makes very clear his distaste for authoritarian power of any kind (I believe he has an almost exact quote to that fact), and nowhere does he see more problems than with his home country of Japan. However, what astounds me about his movies is that he is very careful to present the issues in so much more than simplistic terms, and though there are "good" guys and "bad" guys, he is a strict realist and makes sure their motivations and viewpoints are fully explained. His movies always surprise and compel me, and now that I'm one third the way through his 9 hour long trilogy, I am remembering why.Say what you want about Harakiri and Samurai Rebellion, the samurai "hero" is no action star and his fights ultimately come from being cornered where diplomacy and critical thinking no longer works. Now, Kobayashi is in the WWII era and there are no samurai defenders of justice to save the day, only a complicated mess of Imperialism, nationalism, and patriotism that one lowly humanist finds himself in constant confrontation with. Getting a job at some ore mines, Kaji hopes to find a productive job that will keep him out of the front lines of the war while doing the best to preserve human life in any way he can. At first arrival (in a noteworthily dusty and windy fashion), he confuses his new bosses and their coworkers by claiming he can increase production by--get this--treating workers well and giving them an incentive to work. These terribly radical ideas that clash so harshly against the typical production cycle of "beat the worker, get work done" is at first met with some success, much to the surprise and elation of the workers, but soon afterward the military appears with a cargo of 500 Chinese POWs to increase labor in the mines, and Kaji finds himself a slave owner of hundreds of desperate, starved, unwilling "special workers." Now no one has any patience with his pleas as he attempts to find a way of treating the new workers fairly, stemming escape attempts, and working the complicated and corrupt politics of so many military, industry, and government men.You know where this is going, but despite the 3hr40min playlength, it goes by rather rapidly. Again, there are no samurai sword dances to bring justice and hope to the "end" of the first part, but nevertheless most viewers should find themselves riveted to the screen as fully fleshed out, realistic characters struggle for power and attention and try to save lives--whether it be other people's lives or their own. This movie was shot in the late 1950s, not too far removed from the actual war, and Kobayashi fearlessly and directly confronts everything he observed wrong with the system during wartime Japan. Historical cultural stresses are recognized too, as the Chinese laborers and Japanese masters are constantly confronted with dehumanization and racism, and even a lone Korean appears as a guy "who is hated by both sides" and, in his own way, becomes a massive wrench thrown into an already crumbling machine. The dialog is also very precise and meaningful, important in a nearly four hour long movie, and there's a surprisingly lot of it considering the landscape its shot in. Which brings me to my final point: this is all set against the backdrop of a mining country-side, and Kobayashi uses the natural Japanese landscape to backdrop an epic humanitarian struggle against a sort of severe and rigid lifelessness. The landscape shots themselves can keep you interested through much of the movie, and Kobayashi's use of widescreen composition would make Sergio Leone's jaw drop (if it didn't actually, it would).Kobayashi's storytelling, also, is rather a little more accessible to Western cultures, too. It's more Kurosawa than Mizoguchi or Ozu. Along with many references to Western influences, the actor who plays Kaji looks more like a Westerner than most of the other characters around him (during the dust storm scene he almost looks like Clark Gable...), and he even gets judged poorly for "so many Western books". I'm not entirely sure that Kobayashi looked to the West and found a much better solution to authoritarianism, but he certainly is not attached to Japanese styles of film-making despite his intimacy and familiarity with the culture (which, by the way, extends beyond even the typical countryman's understanding of his own nation). In this movie many direct references are made to the fact that Kaji does not necessarily fit in, and that his mentality is literally Other than the predominate Japanese culture. What makes it great, though, is that Kaji is no perfect being and the other characters are never simple caricatures. Kaji approaches issues with straight-forward critical thinking, and despite how strong his convictions, surprisingly never falls into idealism. It's rare to see a movie like that from any culture, much less one that's able to sustain it for such a long period of time.We'll see how Kaji survives being on the front lines. Methinks the dialog will continue but the story is going to get a lot more messy.--PolarisDiB

This film was hugely popular when it came out around 1960, reflecting the fiercely anti-war sentiment of the Japanese at the time. I have read that for a time when it came out, all three parts of The Human Condition (totaling nine and one-half hours) were shown in a single sitting at theaters in northern Tokyo, starting around 10 pm and ending in time for people to catch the trains home the next morning.While it is a powerful film which portrays much of the suffering and brutality visited on the Chinese in Manchuria by the Japanese war machine, it is not without some rather unlikely plot twists. In particular, Kaji seems somewhat too saint-like to be believable.It is worth mentioning that the title "The Human Condition" is perhaps misleading. The Japanese word "jouken" corresponding to "condition" is not normally used in a descriptive sense, but rather, as a condition to be fulfilled or satisfied. Thus the title might be better rendered "The Conditions for Being Human"--the implication being that in wartime, the conditions for remaining fully human are elusive at best.