It's Christmas Eve of 1943 and the Osone family is celebrating. Junji Masuda, who is engaged to the daughter of the house, Mitsuko Miura, tells her not to wait. She is devastated. Suddenly the police enter, ransack the eldest son's room and arrest him for writing something in which he barely criticizes the government. As the last two years of the war drag on, the two other sons join the armed forces and are killed. Their uncle, Eitarô Ozawa, is a colonel at the central command. He has privilege, he has rank and he enters the house, takes it over, redecorates it and shows contempt for the head of the house, Haruko Sugimura, who silently endures.
For twenty years, film makers were forbidden to criticize the Japanese government or the military. The director of this movie, Keisuke Kinoshita, had already made several propaganda movies. Now, with the militarists out and the Americans under MacArthur in charge, he made this movie, partially to set himself right with the new government. However for the remainder of his career, he would evince again and again the same hatred and cynicism towards authority.
That was in 1946, when KINEMA JUNPO called this the best movie of the year; Kurosawa's Capraesque NO REGRETS FOR OUR YOUTH was rated #2. Almost three quarters of a century later, how does it rate? Ozawa is certainly a very cinematic monster. At times however, the movie seems more concerned with making its points than with good story-telling. The scene in which Ozawa has soldiers bringing in rations to hide in the cellar for his wife and himself, while the radio talks about how the harvest is so bad, while Ozawa goes on about how the government has betrayed them and if ten million starve, it will be a lesson to them is pushing the limits, if not exceeding them.
However, although much time has passed, the problem remains: people using their position for unwarranted gains; people who don't care what happens to others; people who say that other people should suffer; people who when the folly of their actions crash down on them, whine it is not their fault; people who; people who; people who.
Like the wine we spill at Passover seder, one drop for the suffering of each plague visited on the Egyptians, lessening our joy at our freedom, there are still People Who. Perhaps it was made largely to get Kinoshita in right with the authorities and let him continue practicing his craft. However, he was still saying the same thing forty years later, so I'm pretty sure he was sincere.
