My most recent
peak cinematic experience was in the last days of August at Toronto’s Bell
Lightbox, home base of the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) which
starts September 6. (I’ll be seeing about 25 films at this year’s edition.
That’s for a later blog.)
This was the
screening over three days—August 25, 26, and 28—of the monumental Japanese
masterwork The Human Condition directed by Masaki Kobayashi and released
as three two-part films—No Greater Love, Road to Eternity, A
Soldier’s Prayer—from 1959 to 1961. Presented as part of TIFF’s “Summer
in Japan” series, this was a rare chance to take in a theatrical showing of one
of the greatest achievements of Japanese cinema. The timing also coincided with
the 80th birthday on August 28 of a longtime Ottawa friend George
Wright whose son Roger and family with two young granddaughters live in Tokyo. Bringing
George with me to his hometown of Toronto for four days made sharing this movie
event extra special for us.
Based on a
six-volume novel, The Human Condition centres on the existential dilemmas
encountered by its protagonist, a gentle soul named Kaji, whose social humanist
ideals are repeatedly challenged by the brutal conditions of Japanese-occupied
Manchuria during the period of the Second World War. It’s a transcendent performance by Tasuya
Nakadai. Kaji escapes army service by
becoming a supervisor in a savage work camp for Chinese slave labour.
When that ends badly he is forced into
military service, faces appalling attacks, must kill to survive and escape,
becomes a prisoner of war, then escapes again in wintertime sustained only by
the faint hope of a loving reunion with his wife Michito (Michiyo Aratama).
Each
of the three parts opens in a scene of snow falling; the last moments end in a
snowy landscape. It’s as if Kaji is struggling to “stay on the humanism train”,
as one piece of dialogue puts it, within the winter of the human condition—the
ravaging horrors of imperialism, racism, and total war.
The
scale of the production succeeds in being both truly epic and intensely
character-driven, from stunning widescreen cinematography to extreme close-ups
that highlight Kaji’s humanity and moral choices tested by life-and-death
situations. Good summary descriptions of
the three parts can be found here: The Human Condition Flim Series See also the essay by Philip Kemp for The Criterion Collection: The Human Condition: The Prisoner
Had
I seen this extraordinary work earlier it would certainly haven been among the
top movie milestones in my film book anthology.
It does go to show that there is always more to discover, past and
present, in the wider world of cinema.
By
chance, after returning from the August 26 screening of No Greater Love, the Turner Classic Movies (TCM) channel was
showing the 1961 feature Bridge to the Sun directed by
Etienne Périer based on the true
story of an American woman who falls in love and marries a Washington
D.C.-based Japanese diplomat in the mid-1930s.
She returns with him to Japan, struggling with the cultural differences
and strict honour codes of a patriarchal society. He is posted back to the Japanese embassy in
Washington before the war. Then Pearl
Harbour upsets their world as the Japanese are expelled. With a young daughter she takes the brave
decision to follow her husband back to Japan, facing the inevitable suspicions. Somehow the family manages to survive the
vicissitudes of a terrible war. The movie, a France-U.S. coproduction, is not a
masterpiece. But it is a compelling love
story and wartime drama. With that
period of Japanese history on my mind, I was glad of the opportunity to watch
it again.
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