Three or More Madmen « The Ambiguities
Almost ten hours of pain, suffering, and moral anguish, [Kobayashi’s The Human Condition] becomes, somewhere around the third of its six parts, hypnotic and all-consuming, thanks mostly to the astounding brilliance of its cinematography, editing, and formal composition, and the performance of the great Tatsuya Nakadai. That is, unless you find it completely unwatchable. Which is perfectly valid.
As for me, watching it while I was also reading Tolstoy — not just Tolstoy, late Tolstoy, prophet-howling-in-the-wilderness Tolstoy — left a sense of having my brain scrubbed thoroughly and left out to dry: unpleasant, perhaps, but necessary. The works share a directness and search for fundamental principles and truths that’s more or less absent from contemporary discourse. You can’t subsist on a steady diet of this stuff — at least I can’t — but you need some of it, or your soul dies.
Love this, Willie.
