The Human Condition III: A Soldier’s Prayer (1961)

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The Human Condition III: A Soldier’s Prayer (1961) – M. Kobayashi

At the end of the second film, Kaji’s battalion has been decimated by Soviet tanks and he and a tiny handful of other soldiers remain alive but unwilling to rejoin the army. Kaji leads them toward South Manchuria (where he hopes his wife Michiko is still alive and waiting) and along the way they pick up a ragtag band of other refugees. They wander aimlessly through the forest and some die of starvation.  Kaji is like a man possessed and his original humanism is overwhelmed by a desire to survive and to re-join Michiko, leading him to strike first when Soviet soldiers and hostile Chinese peasants get in their way. Ultimately, they are captured and, ironically, Kaji ends up in a POW labor camp not all that different from the one he managed in the first film of the trilogy. Despite their socialist orientation, the Soviets use similar inhumane tactics, further dispiriting Kaji. Regaining his humanist impulse, he tries to stand up for his rights and those of his fellow prisoners. However, when this fails, he takes justice into his own hands and then attempts to flee to Michiko through the harsh Manchurian winter.  It doesn’t end well.  So, as the trilogy closes (9 hours later), I find myself reeling from its bitter look at humankind. Even those of us most noble and sincerely interested in the welfare of others can be beaten down by war, by man’s inhumanity to man, by the callousness of those in power to those beneath them or different from them. Failure to live up to ideals, even when few others try, can lead to discouragement, self-loathing, alienation, and death. Kaji’s trials provide Kobayashi with a microcosm that stands in for larger existential issues that face us all. The human condition may be one in which it proves difficult to avoid self-defeating compromises and accompanying angst. But we’ve got to try.