This Nearly 10-Hour Masterpiece Is Worth Every Minute of Your Time (2025)

Making a single war movie that exceeds three hours in length while managing to be great from start to finish is one thing, but creating a whole trilogy with each installment running for more than three hours, and having the whole thing be something groundbreaking and earth-shattering? That’s something else altogether, but Masaki Kobayashi managed just that with his The Human Condition trilogy, three epic World War II movies that were released between 1959 and 1961. To date, no other war movie has had quite the same impact, nor has succeeded on such a vast scale.

Each film follows the same protagonist while looking at a different stage of the Second World War, with the lead-up to World War II explored in No Greater Love (1959), the chaos of combat covered in Road to Eternity (1959), and World War II’s aftermath for the survivors detailed in A Soldier's Prayer (1961). Taken together, The Human Condition is a difficult watch, owing to its immense length and the confronting subject matter at hand, but it is also an essential three-part epic. Undoubtedly, it's one of the most powerful war dramas of all time, and a must-watch for anyone interested in essential Japanese cinema.

The Narrative of 'The Human Condition' Trilogy

There’s a great deal more to The Human Condition than just the story, but things more or less start with the writing, when it comes to war movies (and cinema in general, really). The structure of The Human Condition spends equal amounts of time on differing stages of an immense global conflict, focusing on the Japanese experience but still representing the scale, devastation, and harsh reality of the war at the same time. Things are seen through the eyes of a conscientious objector named Kaji, a tragic hero of sorts expertly played by Tatsuya Nakadai, who is totally transformed physically and emotionally by his experience in the war.

In No Greater Love, he struggles to maintain his sense of morality and personal values while avoiding taking part in actual combat, with this avoidance leading him to be a labor chief in Japanese-colonized Manchuria. He clashes with superiors and is constantly appalled by awful conditions, which leads to him being drafted and forced to take part in combat against Soviet forces during the film’s second part, Road to Eternity. He survives until the fighting abruptly stops, but then the third film, A Soldier’s Prayer, shows the difficulty in continuing to live, highlighting a struggle to return home that eventually results in Kaji himself becoming a prisoner. It’s simultaneously nightmarish and harshly realistic, with the third part of the trilogy being especially grueling to watch, intentionally so.

The Staggering Scale of 'The Human Condition' Trilogy

So, when watching The Human Condition trilogy as if it were a single film, the runtime – which is nearly 10 hours long – and the evolving nature of the narrative certainly contribute to it feeling like an unprecedented epic. It’s technically a war movie, sure, but it also moves between being a prisoner of war movie, a film about boot camp (think the first half of Full Metal Jacket), a film about active combat, and then a survival movie. It does so seamlessly by always centering on Kaji. Everything is seen through his eyes, and without him, the trilogy would surely feel scattershot.

For as epic as it is, The Human Condition is not all about spectacle by any means, as the title might imply. It is something that aims to look at the titular human condition in the sort of bold and artistic way only cinema can allow, and it more than earns the right to have such an encompassing title. Kaji’s tragic personal journey through an overall gargantuan (and also tragic) conflict does explore what it means to be human, and unwaveringly suggests that everyone, no matter how principled, is capable of changing in upsetting ways during monumentally challenging times.

'The Human Condition' Trilogy Is Still Relevant and Powerful

While it may be shot in black-and-white, The Human Condition does not suggest that war is as easy as a black-and-white situation. It is about a good person wrapped up in a terrible thing, and how he has to walk an impossible line between maintaining morality and surviving within something that’s immoral. Kaji may be undeniably good, and war can be seen as undoubtedly bad, but that doesn’t mean the former can defeat or outperform – for lack of a better word – the latter.

This message isn't an easy one to come away with, especially at the end of an already grim, violent, harrowing, and lengthy war epic, but it’s something that continues to feel relevant, both as the idea applies to warfare and how it links to, you know, the human condition. The struggle of being one way while life is screaming at you to act another way is so brilliantly explored in The Human Condition, and, more than its quality as a depiction of war or its status as an epic, that exploration might well be the primary reason why it’s so enduring and timeless, not to mention such an essential piece of international cinema.

The Human Condition trilogy can be streamed on Criterion Channel in the U.S.

Watch on Criterion

The Human Condition I: No Greater Love

Not Rated

Drama

History

War

A Japanese pacifist, unable to face the dire consequences of conscientious objection, is transformed by his attempts to compromise with the demands of war-time Japan.

Release Date

December 14, 1959

Director

Masaki Kobayashi

Cast

Tatsuya Nakadai , Michiyo Aratama , Chikage Awashima , Ineko Arima , Keiji Sada , Sô Yamamura , Akira Ishihama , Kôji Nanbara

Runtime

208 Minutes