Cheap Human Condition I - No Greater Love (DVD) (Masaki Kobayashi) Price

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Customer Reviews of Human Condition I - No Greater Love

Addresses the same problems we are seeing in Iraq
As I write this in May 2004, we are learning of the shocking atrocities committed by American soldiers on Iraqi prisoners of war in Abu Ghaiv Prison.This film deals with the eternal issue of man's inhumanity to man. The main character is an idealist who believes that all men, even prisoners of war, have the right to be treated with basic human dignity. This is the very problem American is grappling with today. Follow the journey of the main character as he tries to implement his beliefs in a Japanese labor camp during World War II. Some psychologists believe that, given the right circumstances, we are all capable of the atrocities committed in this fictional movie or in the all to real Iraqi prison. Decide for yourself whether to despair or to believe that someday we will see the need for treating all men with humanity and dignity.

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A True Masterpiece
This is a heart wrenching story of one man's effort to remain true to himself and his beliefs even in the face of adversities.Masaki Kobayashi was promised by his superiors that he would not be drafted for war and this pleased him well as he is about to marry the love of his life. Instead he was instructed to take up a position in the mines where he found himself in charge of chineses prisoners. However this posed a problem since this was taking place in Japan in the World war 2 era. However Masaki believes in treating human life with respect even if they were prisoners working in mines. In an attempt to do this he angered his peers and superiors who then plotted ways to get rid of him. Now Masaki found that in trying to please all he ended up pleasing none including his wife. He was going against the grain and found himself up against the wall. How could he remain true to his beliefs and values? Get this movie and find out.

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The FilmNotes entry from the Pacific Film Archive:
It is rare when an episode of national history can be interpreted without the burden of illusions, both obsolete and nostalgic. And this is perhaps one of the great strengths of Masaki Kobayashi's The Human Condition, a nine-hour epic about Japan's occupation of China during the Second World War. The trilogy begins with an attack on the inhuman practices within the Japanese Army and ends with a bitter denunciation of Stalinism by the would-be-socialist hero, Kaji (Tatsuya Nakadai), a Japanese soldier who has confronted the horrid face of war and found it unyielding. In grand Dostoyevskian flourishes, Kobayashi suggests the impossibility of an individual altering the ethical standards of a social system. Kaji, driven by an idealized vision of Japan redeemed by social reform, tries to overcome injustice and exploitation during a military conquest based solely on these principles. Brutalized by the very country he defends, Kaji refuses to desert, for desertion implies relinquishing responsibility for his own homeland. Kaji's heroism lies in this exacting refusal to abandon Japan or his humanity. Part One finds Kaji working as a supervisor in a forced labor camp in southern Manchuria where he and his wife (Michiyo Aratama) attempt to better the dreadful lot of the enslaved Chinese workers. Kaji is accused of dissent, tortured, then inducted into the army. In Part Two, Kaji is equally appalled by the horrendous treatment afforded recruits. Given the rank of officer, he tries to install more humane procedures but only succeeds in attracting the ire of his fellow officers. By Part Three, the Japanese army is being routed by superior Russian troops. Fleeing to the south, Kaji is captured by the Soviet army and imprisoned. Here, he learns the bitter truth of the Red Army as liberators. Kobayashi's The Human Condition can be viewed as a single aesthetic entity, complete in its sweep of historical events and visual stylizations. The gargantuan undertaking to dramatize the wilful ironies of the Manchurian campaign never compromises Kobayashi's ability to define the human scale of injustice. Standing-in for the director, Kaji says, "Minor facts ignored by history can be fatal to the individual." It is Masaki Kobayashi's recognition of "minor facts" that joins the poetic to the journalistic in a scathing epic about the cruelties of war.