The fall of the martyr.

Just saw Kobayashi's film series, The Human Condition. It ends on a deeply saddening note. Once again, Kobayashi puts Tatsuya Nakadai in his favourite scenario: the individual vs the social establishment.

Part 1: No Greater Love- Kaji begins as the embodiment of innocence, an idealistic boy who wants human beings to be treated humanely. There's no coincidence that he wears a white shirt and formal attire, it only accentuates the purity of his character. But it's this purity that drags him to his defeat. It brings him face to face with people who share the same privileges as he does while identifying with the sufferers, to the point where he's willing to lose whatever he has. He's willing to let it all go at the cost of preserving his humanity. But what really sickened me was none of the injustice enraged him. He seemed to disregard everything as humane oversight, forgiving everyone for everything they did whether it worked for or against him. He didn't seem to believe in human accountability. He took a stance that he fully believed in, but he couldn't feel it in his bones. He identified with the victims but never managed to fully feel what they felt. He's shipped off to the army for being a sympathizer and I couldn't help but think he deserved it for being such a weak human being. It's the survival of the fittest after all. I initially held all my problems with the character's ideologies against the film. But by the end, I realized that all his flaws in this stage of his life was only a means to an end. I did have minor quibbles though, with the unnecessary subplots, particularly a love affair involving a whore and a prisoner of war, neither character I didn't care for in the slightest, yet having to witness them cry in my f#cking face for reasons that I couldn't really empathize with. I didn't like the staged violence either. 8/10.

Part 2: Road to eternity- This part was more refined and more easy to take in. I began to see Kaji as a man here, not as the tantrum-throwing boy that he was in the first part. His values and ideals remain, but he's wiser, he knows when he has to intervene and when not. He was a feeler in the first part, now he's a thinker too. He stands up against injustice, but knows that sometimes biting a bullet instead of firing back will further his cause. I bottled up anger like f#ck when the army veterans harassed him. And the scene where he lashes out for being pushed beyond a point is typical Kobayashi! Tatsuya Nakadai is invigorated with aggression and you just wait and watch, hoping he strikes. You feel his energy. I still found Kaji's managerial ways ridiculous. Soldiers are meant to become killing machines. This guy's trying to create a family, hoping to take men to war cheerful and happy, willing to stand by him and die with him. Him and his unit is sent to the battlefield, they're outnumbered and left to die. Kaji achieves a milestone here when he murders another man to save himself. It finally brings him face to face with his true nature, that of a self-preserving animal. He survives with two other men and flees. What happened to dying like a man with men you feel for? 9/10.

Part 3: A Soldier's Prayer- This segment is the least objective of all, it just wanders and finds itself like its soldiers who're finding their way back home, yet the most interesting of the trilogy. Kaji's a leading man now, he leads his pack of surviving soldiers back home, helping stranded civilians along the way without giving in to useless emotion, but instead being realistic and taking charge of what's at hand and what's about to come. Kaji eventually ends up as one of the Prisoners of war he tried to help in the beginning, but there's no version of his former self here. Everyone's ruthless and uncaring, particularly a sycophantic translator who grins with sadistic pleasure knowing that Kaji's fate lies in his hands. It appears that, by now, Kaji might have gained a sense of contempt for people in general but still holds on to his ideals, demonstrated by smaller ways of rebelling. I loved it when Kaji finally kills a superior, this is his final milestone, where he feels entitled to taking justice into his own hands and by his own rules. This is where he finally feels all the injustice in his bones. A moment of catharsis (for the character and the viewer), while it may be, I just wish it had been more violent and I could hear some flesh being battered. The film finally it ends with Kaji walking home (or so he believes) before dropping dead. I'm not sure if this signifies that Kaji is insignificant and that his defiant stance has served no other purpose than his own defeat or if it means that one must die with hope even if he dies a dog's death. 10/10.

From watching The Human Condition, Harakiri and Samurai Rebellion, it seems to me that Kobayashi was fighting his own cynicism. They all carry such power and vitality with villains and heroes equally memorable. There's no way someone can come up with something like this without actually believing it on some level- "Human beings are just lust and greed that absorb and excrete." At this point I can watch a movie just because it has Tatsuya Nakadai acting in it. Downloaded Black River and Kwaidan. High and Low is on its way.

Where Harakiri and Samurai Rebellion seemed to be about the virtuousness of the courageous martyr, The Human condition seems to about the insignificance of the powerless martyr.

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