The Human Condition III: A Soldier's Prayer

Masaki Kobayashi's view of human nature reaches its nadir in this, the third section of THE HUMAN CONDITION, an adaptation of Jumpei Gomikawa's NINGEN NO JOKEN. As WWII winds down, Kaji (Tatsuya Nakadai), already brutalized by his combat experience, must deal with the Russian invasion of Manchuria. When his squad is nearly wiped out by a tank unit, he decides to surrender to Russian troops in the belief that he'll be treated better than he has been by his own military. Yet when he arrives at the Russian POW camp in Manchuria, he finds it occupied by Japanese soldiers. He and the other prisoners are subjected to relentless and harrowing cruelty, and Kaji becomes more like an animal by the day. At length, he murders a man and escapes from the camp, hoping to cross the freezing wasteland of Manchuria to return to his wife. En route, he witnesses a level of depravity that can only be reached by those in the most desperate of circumstances. The shattering conclusion of Kobayashi's antiwar trilogy reaches tragic depths as it explores the criminal behavior of the Japanese in Manchuria and, more generally, the myriad ways in which the utter absence of emotion translates into wholesale human annihilation. (official distributor synopsis)