Kaji has to search hard to find the humanity in the world (© Shochiku Co., Ltd.)
THE HUMAN CONDITION (Masaki Kobayashi, 1959-61)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
April 20-29
Series runs April 19 – May 16
212-727-8110
filmforum.org
Some stories are just too big to be told in one film, let alone two, so from April 19 to May 16, Film Forum is showing well-known and under-the-radar official and unofficial trilogies, including three-packs from Francis Ford Coppola, Sergio Leone, Lucas Belvaux, Andrzej Wajda, Jean Cocteau, Ingmar Bergman, Nicolas Winding Refn, and Satyajit Ray, among others. (Note: There is separate admission to each film.) Masako Kobayashi’s ten-hour epic, The Human Condition, based on a popular novel by Jumpei Gomikawa, is one of the most stunning achievements ever captured on film. Shot over the course of three years, the film follows one man’s harrowing struggle to never give up his humanity as he is dragged deeper and deeper into the morass of WWII. Tatsuya Nakadai is remarkable as Kaji, a man who believes in common decency, personal discipline, and, above all else, that humanity will always triumph. In the first part, No Greater Love, the steadfastly practical Kaji is hesitant to marry his sweetheart, Michiko (Michiyo Aratama), for fear that he will be called to serve in the Japanese army and might not come back to her alive. But when his detailed plan to treat workers fairly is accepted by the government, he is made labor supervisor of a mine in far-off Southern Manchuria, where hundreds of Chinese prisoners are brought in as well — and regularly starved, beaten, and, on occasion, brutally killed in cold blood. Kaji’s methods, which have close ties to communism, leading many to refer to him as a “Red,” anger both sides — the Japanese want to treat the workers like animals, and the Chinese prisoners don’t trust that he has their welfare in mind. A series of escape attempts threatens the stability of the labor camp and comes between Kaji and Michiko, whose undying love is echoed in the yearning, unfulfilled desire between a Korean prisoner and a Japanese prostitute. Broken promises, lies, and betrayal reach a tense conclusion that sets the stage for the second part of Kobayashi’s masterpiece.
Michiyo Aratama and Tatsuya Nakadai hope that love trumps all in antiwar epic (© Shochiku Co., Ltd.)
SPOILER ALERT: Skip the next paragraph if you don’t want to know what happens in parts II & III!
In Road to Eternity, Kaji has been drafted into the Kwantung Army, going through basic training in preparation for battle. Kaji hopes to find some semblance of humanity in the army, but the superiors are constantly slapping and hitting the recruits, punishing them in brutal ways. When Michiko suddenly shows up, Kaji suffers harassment as it is being decided whether he will be allowed to spend the night with her. With the Soviets on the march, a firefight beckons, but the Japanese troops are woefully short on weapons and ammunition — and confidence, with rumors of Japan’s demise rampant. The epic concludes with the powerful, emotional A Soldier’s Prayer. Kaji is determined to make it back to Michiko, even if it means desertion, but a long, treacherous trip awaits him and he is dangerously low on supplies. He is trying desperately to hang on to his dignity and humanity, but it becomes more and more difficult as the weather worsens, hopelessly lost people join him through the forest, and food is nowhere in sight.
The Human Condition, which has had a profound influence on such filmmakers as Stanley Kubrick, Steven Spielberg, Andrei Tarkovsky, and so many others, might take place during WWII, with Japan fighting for the Axis powers while also immersed in the Second Sino-Japanese War, but its story about man’s inhumanity to man is timeless. At its core, it’s not about Fascism, socialism, democracy, and ethnocentricity but humankind’s need for love and truth. Kaji and Michiko represent everyman and everywoman, separated by a cruel, cold world. Kobayashi provides no answers — the future he envisions is bleak indeed. At Film Forum a few years back for a tribute to his career, Nakadai talked about how brutal the making of The Human Condition was — it is also brutal to sit through, but it is a landmark work that must be seen.
There’s an eye-opening “wow” moment in Willem Baptist’s documentary Instant Dreams in which Polaroid camera inventor Edwin H. Land, in a short 1970 promotional film, The Long Walk, reaches into his pocket, pulls out a black wallet that resembles an iPhone, and refers to it as a “camera that would be, oh, like the telephone, something that you use all day long, a long-awaited ultimate camera that is a part of the evolving human being.” The shot is shocking and eerie; how did this visionary see the future so clearly? In Instant Dreams, Dutch filmmaker Baptist (Wild Boar, I’m Never Afraid) follows four people obsessed with the Polaroid camera, which was invented by Land in 1948 so we could “press a button and have a picture”; the company stopped making its iconic white-bordered film for the cameras in 2008, but that has not stopped enthusiasts from continuing their passion. One of the four is Christopher Bonanos, a New York magazine editor and author of the book Instant: The Story of Polaroid; in the movie, he shares some of the history of Land and Polaroid and takes pictures of friends and family, especially his young son, who he says will be among the last to experience the feel and smell of a developing Polaroid photo, which can take between one and three minutes to finish. He also talks about Land’s prescience about the next era of photography, pointing out that “the idea would be that you would just shoot pictures, all day long, a future in which one would document one’s life all the time.”
Metrograph celebrates the career of Finnish auteur Aki Kaurismäki with the fab series “Total Kaurismäki Show,” consisting of seventeen features and an evening of nine shorts by the uniquely talented writer-director who sees the world like nobody else. On April 9, Metrograph will be screening The Man Without a Past, Kaurismäki’s touching, funny, dark, and satiric film that won the 2002 Grand Jury Prize at Cannes. In the brutal opening, an unidentified character gets severely beaten and dies, then wakes up with amnesia. M (Markku Peltola) is soon taken in by a desperately poor family who lives in a shack they call a container. He meets Irma (Kati Outinen, in a small role that won her Best Actress at Cannes), and their potential romance is both sweet and absurd. Kaurismäki wrote, produced, and directed this splendid example of the offbeat nature of his work, which is always intelligent, challenging, and rewarding.
The final installment in his self-described Loser Trilogy (following Drifting Clouds and 