Review of The Human Condition II: Road to Eternity

Yesterday, I took a look at the first film in the japanese Human Condition trilogy, directed by Masaki Kobayashi. The first movie alone is over 3 hours long, so as you might expect, it sets up quite a complicated and in-depth story that this second movie expands on. No Greater Love ends on a cliffhanger, with Kaji getting discharged from his position of authority at the labor camp in northern china. He is fired because his superior officers don't like how he is sympathizing with the enemy. Now sentenced to be drafted into world war 2, Kaji faces an uncertain, but certainly grueling future. Road to Eternity is 3 whole hours of what Kaji must endure while in the japanese army. The treatment he receives is horrific, he has few friends, and beatings occur so often they become routine. Kaji finds life in the military is hard to get used to, as you can't do whatever you want anymore. Unfortunately for him, the grunts he shares his barracks with seem to know that he went too easy on the chinese earlier. He is mocked and verbally bullied by his peers. One day, Michiko shows up asking the commanders of the barracks to see him, and he is allowed to stay with her in a secluded area for one night. Shortly after, Kaji finally appears to have made a friend. Obara, another recruit in his unit, seems to get along with him well, but during a march one day, Obara falls behind significantly because he's not strong enough. Because of this, Obara is singled out and made fun of by the men, prompting him to shoot himself in the barracks bathroom. This is where things get really bad for Kaji as he seeks revenge for the demise of the one decent person in his unit. He disobeys orders and tries to pressure his superiors into punishing those responsible for urging Obara to kill himself, in particular, a private first class named Yoshida. Kaji's bosses just have their enlisted men beat him senseless for being insubordinate. Even though the officers don't deliver the justice Kaji demands, he does get his revenge when Yoshida drowns in a pool of quicksand during a training exercise. Once Kaji returns to the barracks, he is promoted to PFC, but a batch of extremely cruel and bloodthirsty artillery soldiers make themselves known to him. The beatings Kaji took for mouthing off to his superior officers is nothing compared to what these men do to him. By this point, the war is almost over, and Okinawa has just fallen to the americans. Kaji knows the japanese empire is finished, so he contemplates escaping the military, but is sent to assist in building a defensive line instead. The men know the USSR is about to hit the japanese forces in northern china with everything they have, and sure enough, swarms of soviet soldiers and armored vehicles storm into manchuria. Kaji and his comrades try their best to hold them off, but the russian blitzkrieg is unstoppable. During the confused and heavily one sided carnage, soviet tanks easily sweep aside any japanese resistance, as their anti-tank weapons are few in number. When it's all over, japan had lost nearly all the ground they had gained, and with it, the cream of their forces. Kaji is now completely alone, surrounded by soviet infantry and tanks. He wanders off into the bleak landscape, undiscovered, but definitely afraid. As is the case with its predecessor, this movie is awesome. In my opinion, it's even better than the first, since we finally get to see what Kaji's life in the military consists of. The first film has him act as a supervisor for chinese laborers, so he's not enlisted yet. The acting remains as strong as ever in this second entry, which is helped by the fact that Kaji undergoes deeper character development. He is angry at people for wronging him in the past, specifically his bosses from the first movie for allowing him to get drafted. He's angry and his fellow soldiers in this movie for taunting and beating him. Most of all, he's angry at himself for believing that moving to manchuria would allow him to escape the army. By the end, Road to Eternity ends the way the first film did, with Kaji ending one horrible chapter of his life and starting another. He doesn't know what will happen to him now that he's alone behind enemy lines. I do, but that's a story for another time.