☆ ☆ ☆ ☆
The
Human Condition I: No Greater Love (1958) – M. Kobayashi
Whoa – heavy. The first three hours (and
two parts) of Kobayashi’s 10-hour epic tell the story of Kaji (Tatsuya Nakadai),
a pacifist and humanist working for a mining company in Manchuria when it has
been taken over by Japan during WWII.
The film pulls no punches – although Kaji is noble and earnest and holds
positive values, many of the other Japanese leaders (and particularly the
military regime) are depicted as heartless and cruel. When 600 prisoners of war
are transferred to the mine, things get very tense. Kaji champions their human
rights but he is up against a wall – the film becomes morally very complex,
showing the trap that Kaji finds himself in and the compromises he makes. Nevertheless,
there does seem to be one clear moral “right answer” – it is the human
condition that this choice is so difficult to implement. Truly, hell is other
people. (Of course, the legacy of Japan’s invasion of China lives on in
politics today, more than 60 years later.) Six hours more to go…
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