The Human Condition II: Road to Eternity

The second installment of Masaki Kobyashi's nine-hour trilogy opens with Kaji (Tatsuya Nakadai) being drafted and sent back to Manchuria, this time to undergo basic training for the Kwantung Army. Because of his sympathy for the ill-treated recruits, he's suspected of communist leanings. In fact, he does befriend a communist sympathizer named Shinjo (Kei Sato) who's planning an escape to Russia. After a brief visit from his wife, Michiko (Michiyo Aratama), Kaji is taken along with his unit on a grueling forced march that some soldiers don't survive. One such soldier is Obara (Kunie Tanaka), who prefers suicide to the humiliation of weakness before the troops. When Shinjo finally attempts his escape, he ends up in a swamp, but Kaji comes to his rescue. Kaji himself is injured and must be hospitalized. However, his recuperation is curtailed when the head nurse finds him flirting with all the other nurses and feels that the time has come for his discharge. He's sent to work as an assistant for his old friend Lieutenant Kageyama (Keiji Sada), but, once again, his humane attitude toward the enlisted men provokes the career military officers, with serious consequences. More episodic than the other two films in this series, the theme of man's inhumanity is nonetheless unfolded with Kobayashi's typically devastating economy of means. (official distributor synopsis)