Skip to main content

THE HUMAN CONDITION

I happened to read an article on the 10 greatest film directors from Japan.  Of course on the list were Akira Kurosawa, Yasujiro Ozu and Kon Ichikawa.  I thought Masaki Kobayashi deserved to be there.  So I went to another ranking and he was #8.  His memorable films are highly rated:

I am focusing on The Human Condition because I am into the first hour of Part 1 of this trilogy:

Let me quote Wikipedia:

The Human Condition (人間の條件, Ningen no jōken) is a Japanese epic film trilogy made between 1959 and 1961, based on the six-volume novel published from 1956 to 1958 by Junpei Gomikawa.[3] It was directed by Masaki Kobayashi and stars Tatsuya Nakadai. The trilogy follows the life of Kaji, a Japanese pacifist and socialist, as he tries to survive in the totalitarian and oppressive world of World War II-era Japan. Altogether, as a single film it is 9 hours, 39 minutes long, not including intermissions, making it one of the longest narrative films ever made.[4]

I can further add:  brutal, bleak, black-and-white, and a struggle to watch.  So why am I bothering to post on this movie?  Maybe because it is an epic.  Further, TCM on three Sundays will show this trilogy.  Sorry, you already missed Part 1.  On TCM tomorrow (Sunday) night at 8PM for Part 2.  Then Part 3 comes on at 10:45PM on Sunday, October 3.  If through a search I find where you can view Part 1, I'll later so inform you.  Remember, though, that you will spend 9 hours and 39 minutes of your life.

I won't do any reviewing and send you to that Wikipedia article for details.  I can further discourage you by saying that naive and pacifist Kaji goes to war, killing out of necessity and dies at the end without returning to his wife.  If you think you have a tough life, you will now have someone to compare who subsists at the worst end of any scale.  I will record Parts 2 and 3, but wonder if I will bother to watch.  However, I'll enter another quote from Wikipedia:

The British film critic David Shipman described the trilogy in his 1983 book, The Story of Cinema, as "unequivocally the greatest film ever made."[12] In his review for The New York Times in 2008, A. O. Scott declared, "Kobayashi's monumental film can clarify and enrich your understanding of what it is to be alive."[13] Critic Philip Kemp, in his essay written for The Criterion Collection's release of the trilogy, argues that while "the film suffers from its sheer magnitude [and] from the almost unrelieved somberness of its prevailing mood ... The Human Condition stands as an achievement of extraordinary power and emotional resonance: at once a celebration of the resilience of the individual conscience and a purging of forced complicity in guilt (of a nation and, as the title implies, of the whole human race)."[6]

About Masaki Kobayashi, he was born in Otaru in 1916, the city of birth for my grandfather Kenjiro.  Kobayashi went to Waseda University and regarded himself as a pacifist and socialist.  He served in the Imperial Japanese Army in Manchuria.  He refused any promotion, and was taken prisoner, serving in a detention camp in Okinawa for a year.  You get the impression that this film was a story of his life.  His filmography.

A different kind of human condition to give some hope for Humanity:

Got to add one more, for, yes, there is hope:




-

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

HONOLULU TO SEATTLE

The story of the day is Hurricane Milton, now a Category 4 at 145 MPH, with a track that has moved further south and the eye projected to make landfall just south of Sarasota.  Good news for Tampa, which is 73 miles north.  Milton will crash into Florida as a Category 4, and is huge, so a lot of problems can still be expected in Tampa Bay with storm surge.  If the eye had crossed into the state just north of Tampa, the damage would have been catastrophic.  Milton is a fast-moving storm, currently at 17 MPH, so as bad as the rainfall will be over Florida, again, a blessing.  The eye will make landfall around 10PM EDT today, and will move into the Atlantic Ocean north of Palm Bay Thursday morning. My first trip to Seattle was in June of 1962 just after I graduated from Stanford University.  Caught a bus. Was called the  Century 21 Exposition .  Also the Seattle World's Fair.  10 million joined me on a six-month run.  My first. These a...

OSAKA EXPO: Day One

Well, the day finally came for us to go to the Osaka Expo.  We were told ahead of time that the long walks would be fearful, giant lines will need to be tolerated just to get into the Expo, with those ocean breezes, it would really be cold, and so forth. Maybe it was pure luck, but we avoided all the above warnings  We had a grand day, and are looking forward to Sunday, our second day at the Expo.  So come along for an enjoyable ride. Our hotel is adjacent to the Tennoji Station, a very large one with several lines.  We upgraded our Suica card and caught the Misosuji red line towards Umeda. Transferred to the Chuo green line at the Hommachi Station.  This Osaka Metro train took us to the Yumeshima Station at the Expo site.   It was a very large mob leaving the train and heading to the entrance. Took only a few minutes to get to the entrance.  This mob was multiplied by at least a factor of  ten of those already waiting to enter.  However...

WHY YOU SHOULD CONVERT TO A JAPANESE HIGH TECH TOILET

Did you know that   Oktoberfest   in Germany is mostly in September?  The very first day of Oktoberfest 2021 was supposed to be today, September 18, extending into October 3.  Well, as in 2020, Oktoberfest was cancelled. So why is it called by that month when it is held mostly in September?  The first celebration in 1810 was in October. Did you also know that Oktoberfest is held only in Munich?  These days seven million drink more than a liter ( about three typical cans ) of beer each, costing around $11.  Except for my wife and I when we followed the crowd to board the S-Bahn to the fairgrounds near Old Town.  It was drizzling a bit.  We bought a large pretzel outside of a typical barn where beer is served.  We did not know that you needed to get this inside the hall.  So no one came to serve us beer.  After a while we decided to have lunch, and the restaurant we settled on only served wine.  Thus, we might have been the ...